March 2004 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: expiring bearer documents
by Major Variola (ret) 26 Mar '04

26 Mar '04

At 08:10 AM 3/26/04 -0500, R. A. Hettinga wrote: >At 9:48 PM -0800 3/25/04, Major Variola (ret) wrote: >>This recently occurred to me. There is a type of bearer document >>which is exactly like cash (anonymous, finder's keepers/spenders) >>*except* >>that it expires. Its called a concert ticket. >Remember the *asset* is held in bearer *form*. There are no accounts >required to execute/clear/settle the transaction. However a The point is that the asset (a performance) which the bearer-document (ticket) grants access to expires. I think that's actually orthogonal to the ticket itself expiring. Another example with a more gradual loss of value might be a bearer document for a certain amount of short half-life radioactive substance. Or just the substance --no documents, just assets-- though that's less portable than gold for health reasons. I suppose that some foodstuffs also show halflives. And, like a 10 year treasury note, appreciate with age.

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Re: Blue-suited and Green-suited goons
by Major Variola (ret) 26 Mar '04

26 Mar '04

At 10:48 AM 3/26/04 -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: >someone in Iraq (well, he >may be on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border!) is bound to notice that these >blue-suited Troops have clearly been directed (to some extent) by the same >entity that directs the Green-suited troops. Sounds like a good argument to make being a missionary or other cultural vector a capital crime, for national security reasons.

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Re: [osint] Martha's lesson - don't talk to the FBI
by Major Variola (ret) 26 Mar '04

26 Mar '04

At 06:53 PM 3/23/04 -0800, John Young wrote: >Why pity Martha Stewart, so far she's escaped the pokey, Because she got charged with *lying* to a fed when she was *not* under oath. The lesson is real. The ordinary pig on the street --not just a fed-- can lie to you, and bust you if you return the favor. *You* of all people should know this. Perhaps you're too impressed by sharp suits and polite haircuts. I don't give a rat's pastel ass about Stewart (or Padilla, etc), except as a citizen, which pretty much means fodder for the gestapo these days. The only reason to speak to feds or cold-calling police is counter intel, learn what they're interested in. And then publish that. With faces if acquired. ----- Got Osama?

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Welcome to the Fast Track
by R. A. Hettinga 26 Mar '04

26 Mar '04

They didn't say where to, exactly, but we can guess... Cheers, RAH ------- <http://www.forbes.com/fyi/2004/0329/066_print.html> Forbes EZPass Welcome to the Fast Track Matthew Reed Baker, 03.29.04 Airport security can be traveler's hell. If you've been waiting for a quick pass, you may not have to wait much longer. On a hot Wednesday evening last summer, Ed Larson was waiting in a passenger screening line at Philadelphia International Airport when the man ahead of him tried to get a bullet through the X-ray machine. It was a replica attached to a keychain, about two inches long, perhaps for a .357 Magnum, and security personnel wanted to confiscate it. "The guy went absolutely berserk-o," says Larson, a vice president at Wachovia Corporation's headquarters in Charlotte. "The line was backing up, and there was a lot of pent-up anger as it became clear he was fighting over a bullet. I mean, I can't even get my shaving blades through security!" Most agree that security nightmares at many airports have decreased since tough new measures were first imposed following the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. But bottlenecks are still common--and unpredictable. In response, the U.S. government's Transportation Security Administration (TSA) hopes to begin streamlining the security process for frequent flyers as soon as this year. With the involvement of private technology companies, the agency is developing a system that aims to keep security tight while making travel easier and faster for passengers who often have to arrive at the airport two hours ahead of takeoff. "If there were something like an E-ZPass for frequent travelers," says Larson, "I'd have to say I'm interested." Last October, the TSA received $5 million from Congress to begin testing its "Registered Traveler Program," a less Orwellian name than previous suggestions that singled out "trusted" or "known" travelers. The idea sounds simple: Passengers who choose to enroll in the program would have to pass a deeper background check than the usual commercial-database searches, such as those performed by banks when you open a new account. Once the traveler is cleared as no-risk, the information is encoded on a computerized "smart" card, along with the traveler's unique biometric data, such as fingerprints or iris patterns. Registered travelers would still have to pass through a magnetometer, but unless the machine were to go off, they would be exempt from those wand-waving "secondary screenings" and behind-the-partition gropings that now befall about every seventh person in line. Eventually, a separate queue may become available for registered travelers. Enrollment could cost less than $100 a year. If the TSA's plan sounds vaguely familiar, it's because some of its basic structure is derived from CAPPS II (Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System), a controversial agency initiative launching this year that would require the airlines to provide the name, address, telephone number and date of birth of all airline passengers. The information would be checked against government watch lists, and each passenger would be assigned a numerical and color rating based on their level of risk. Unlike CAPPS II, however, the Registered Traveler Program would be strictly voluntary. And how many volunteers might actually welcome the E-ZPass--or at least the E-Zer Pass--at check-in? A 2002 Business Travel Coalition survey queried roughly 400 frequent business travelers--all of whom expected to purchase an average of 38 round-trip tickets for that year alone--and found that more than 70 percent of them supported the idea. While prescreening remains in its early stages in the U.S., similar systems are up and running at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport and Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport, one of the most security-conscious facilities in the world. Six years ago, Texas-based Electronic Data Systems (EDS) set up its Express Entry system at Ben Gurion, and today more than 100,000 travelers have enrolled, or about 15 percent of the airport's passenger traffic. (A $25 registration fee pays for the background check, the biometric encryption and the I.D. card.) The system ensures that individual travelers have no criminal record over a 10- to 15-year period. A "smart card" is encoded with this information as well as hand-geometry data, which contains dozens of measurements of the fingers, shapes of knuckles and distances between joints. Upon arrival at Ben Gurion Airport, registered travelers proceed to an automated kiosk where they swipe the card and have their hands read by a scanner. The result has been impressive: Time spent at passport control has dropped from almost two hours at peak periods to an average of 20 seconds. "[The system] provides two levels of security," says Mike Hulley, president of EDS Transportation Global Industry Practice. "First, you're really proving the person is who they say they are, and second, you're proving that this person has a good background. Biometrics are not infallible, but smart cards are triple-encrypted and 99.99 percent safe. Any tampering with the card destroys it, and if for some reason you don't get a match, you are sent back through regular security." So far, says Hulley, the system has handled more than two million entries and exits without a single security breach. Ben Gurion is only one airport, however. The TSA must contend with 450 U.S. airports, which makes standardizing any one system difficult. And then there's the thorny question of privacy: How much information is enough; exactly what criteria deem a passenger no-risk; and who keeps the data? "The technology is easy compared to how difficult the policy is," says Jeremy Grant, vice president with Maximus' enterprise solutions division, which is developing a similar system called FlySecure. "Privacy is a huge concern in any system that uses background checks and biometric information. You need a number of safeguards, such as provisions that limit the information to what's needed for that time, and also strict limits on disclosure so that it's not abused. On the tech side, you also have to make it secure so that nobody can hack into it." That the Registered Traveler Program is voluntary would seem to eliminate any possibility of institutional coercion to surrender privacy. Still, Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Technology and Liberty Project, recently warned: "It would not likely remain truly voluntary for long as passengers are for all intents and purposes forced to get one in order to avoid humiliating and inconvenient 'second class' treatment at the gate." Steinhardt continued: "Not only are terrorists going to be able to bypass security through forged documentation and fallible technology, the little guy is going to be subjected to the same hassles at the airport, while the first-class or business passenger gets a free pass." It is perhaps premature to condemn the Registered Traveler Program as technologically flawed and elitist before it's even been tested. There is, in fact, at least as much reason to believe that the system will be sufficiently secure and, like airline travel itself, inexpensive enough to be available to most people who choose to use it. Just when we'll have that choice is hard to predict. But it probably won't be too long until some form of an E-ZPass begins easing rush-hour lines at airports. Until then, like Ed Larson, we'll all just have to bite that bullet. THE EYES HAVE IT >From James Bond to Tom Cruise in Minority Report, iris scans have given many a movie a futuristic allure. But the reality is that the technology may soon be coming to an airport near you. Unlike a finger scan, which typically identifies 40 data points, iris recognition confirms more than 250. No two irises are alike: Even a person's left and right eyes are different, and identical twins do not share the same patterns. Consequently iris scans have an error rate of only about 1 in 131,000, compared with roughly 1 in 500 for fingerprints. Machines used to scan irises, however, are far more expensive than those used to match fingerprints, and training users takes longer. One place it is successfully at work is at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, where thousands of eyeballs have been scrutinized since the program began in 2001. Passengers enrolled in that airport's registered traveler system swipe their Privium smart card through a scanner, stare into a video camera and, in the blink of an eye, they're through. -- ----------------- 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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Blue-suited and Green-suited goons
by Tyler Durden 26 Mar '04

26 Mar '04

Variola wrote... "And BTW, what is wrong with hired police ("mercs") esp. when the local police don't work? Do you have a problem with private security guards in the US, as long as they don't involve you in unconsensual transactions? Do you have a problem with weaponsbearing citizens, again, if they don't involve you in unconsensual transactions?" Uh...dunno. Sure, you might be able to make that argument. While you're thinking about it, looking out over the rolling hills of NoCal, someone in Iraq (well, he may be on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border!) is bound to notice that these blue-suited Troops have clearly been directed (to some extent) by the same entity that directs the Green-suited troops. As you strap 17 pounds of exblo-sieves to the back of a 17-year-old, you're probably not going to bother trying to differentiate between the two groups...you'll notice that both batches work for the Americans and speak English, and shoot at you and other Iraqis that try to drive them out. Well, sure you MIGHT notice that there's a greater concentration of the blue-suited variety around oil rigs and stuff, but I'm not convinced that's going to matter. Hell, I'm not smart enough to be convinced it DOES matter in this case. -TD >From: "Major Variola (ret)" <mv(a)cdc.gov> >To: "cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net" <cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net> >Subject: RE: corporate vs. state >Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 12:39:58 -0800 > >At 02:02 PM 3/25/04 -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: > >Think I'm gonna have to disagree with ya' hear partner. > >For one, in the old days Corporations regularly hired goons to mow down > > >striking coalminers and whatnot. > >You have no right to trespass simply because you once worked there. > >Neither does anyone have a right to unreasonable force. > > >OK, those days are all gone, right? Wrong. Halliburton and Bechtel have >both > >hired mercs for their Iraq operations. > >Who gives a rat's ass about what someone does in a foreign land? >US law only applies in the US, despite the current US Regime's >behavior to the contrary. > >And BTW, what is wrong with hired police ("mercs") esp. when the local >police don't work? Do you have a problem with private security guards >in the US, as long as >they don't involve you in unconsensual transactions? Do you have a >problem >with weaponsbearing citizens, again, if they don't involve you in >unconsensual transactions? > >Note that if some company makes enemies overseas, its not the US as a >whole >that has earned the airplane-in-the-skyscraper feedback. Its the >official US regime behavior that Gen. Washington warned about: Trade >with all, make treaties with none, and beware of foreign entanglements. > > > >However, a corporation doesn't actually have to hire the goons these >days in > >order to get the job done, not when it's much cheaper to call upon the > >publically-available pool of goons that function as a government in >some > >places. > >Anyone who abuses the power of the (gullible) State to coerce others >deserves killing. > >The fact that some corporations may leverage existing thuggery to > >get their job done doesn't make them any less complicit. But this is >all > >besides my main point... > >Its not thuggery to protect your own property or freedoms. If someone >is guilty of true thuggery --ie coercion-- then the State is obligated >to act to protect the thuggees. The State only gets involved when a >transaction is not mutually consensual; if the State gets involved in >mutually consensual transactions the State deserves killing -er, >preemptive regime change. > > > > > _________________________________________________________________ Find a broadband plan that fits. Great local deals on high-speed Internet access. https://broadband.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-us/go/onm00200360ave/direct/01/

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Re: corporate vs. state
by Anonymous via panta 26 Mar '04

26 Mar '04

Harmon Seaver wrote: > > >If a member of a club, to which you belong, commits an act of > > > violence, are you liable for that act? > > No, but if the "club", as an entity, does such, you should be. If > the corporation pollutes, all and sundry owners and employees should > be equally liable. Or maybe liability adjusted to investment or wage, What exactly do you mean when you say that the club "as an entity" commits an act? That the club/corporation assembled its members into some kind of Voltron super-mecha-bot, which went on a rampage through the rainforests of Tokyo? A corporation is not a physical entity. It is abstract, a name for a group of people. A corporation can no more act as an entity, than "cybershamanix.com" or "Islam" or "the cypherpunk movement". Employees or members of those groups can act; people can claim to act "in the name of" those groups. But that is not the same thing as the group itself acting as an entity. What you really mean is that if some employees of a corporation commit a crime, you'd like to see the other employees punished also. Guilt by association. Many in the US government are pushing the idea that an abstract entity is a concrete being that can commit crimes and be punished. And not just the War On Terror; all these "conspiracy to provide material support" and "jihad training" charges are about building a case against some arbitrary group, and then arguing that the accused is liable for crimes committed by others associated with that group. When Tim May puts three rounds in the base of Bob Hettinga's geodesic skull, the feds kicking in your door will tell you that The Cypherpunks did it. Be sure to remind them that you deserve equal punishment. > i.e., the biggest stockholders and highest paid employees get the > longest sentences. The concept that no one is actually responsible > for the criminal acts of a corporation is patently absurd. "limited liability" doesn't shield employees or agents of a company from punishment for crimes they commit. It serves to prevent one employee from being punished for the actions of another.

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expiring bearer documents
by Major Variola (ret) 26 Mar '04

26 Mar '04

At 09:20 PM 3/25/04 -0500, R. A. Hettinga wrote: >Fine. Make it cheaper. Moore's Law creates geodesic networks, so >let's have geodesic internet bearer transactions. Yesss! Its only taken a month or so of plonklessness, and we've got the geodesics back! :-) This recently occurred to me. There is a type of bearer document which is exactly like cash (anonymous, finder's keepers/spenders) *except* that it expires. Its called a concert ticket. The liquidators are called ticket agencies. I suppose if I were more cultured this would have occurred to me sooner. Apologies if obvious.

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Re: corporate vs. state
by Major Variola (ret) 26 Mar '04

26 Mar '04

At 12:39 AM 3/26/04 -0000, Frog wrote: >Harmon Seaver wrote: >> each and every person involved in it should be liable. > >If a member of a club, to which you belong, commits an act of violence, are you liable for that act? Excellent question. The gestap^H^H^H^H Feds think you are --membership in a group, some of the members of which perform violence, can get you RICOd etc. A rather clever form of intimidation on their part, don't you think? Of course, the reverse might also be applied. Your ordinary govt clerk might be liable for the actions of her employer. Is "just following orders" a legit defense?

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Extreme Markup Languages Conference 2004
by srn＠coolheads.com 26 Mar '04

26 Mar '04

Two kinds of information are necessary for human life on this planet: (1) Genetic information. No batteries required. (2) Everything else, i.e., civilization. Batteries required. Please be welcome to participate in the 11th annual Extreme Markup Languages Conference --> August 2-6, 2004 <-- Hotel Europa Montreal, Canada www.extrememarkup.com As always, it's a family gathering for rubber-meets-the-road technical luminaries interested in doing a better job of supporting civilization. Come share your light, and be brightened, too. You'll be glad you did, and not only because Montreal in August is great fun. Peer-reviewed paper submissions are due --> April 16, 2004 <-- Submission guidelines: http://www.mulberrytech.com/Extreme (e-mail questions to extreme(a)mulberrytech.com) Peer Reviewer Applications are due TODAY, Friday March 26, 2004. Tutorial Proposals are due TODAY, Friday March 26, 2004. -- Steve Steven R. Newcomb, Co-chair Extreme Markup Languages 2004 -- An IDEAlliance Event www.extrememarkup.com srn(a)coolheads.com ------------------------------------------------------- Coolheads Consulting http://www.coolheads.com direct: +1 540 951 9773 main: +1 540 951 9774 fax: +1 540 951 9775 208 Highview Drive Blacksburg, Virginia 24060 USA

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RE: corporate vs. state, TD's education
by Tyler Durden 25 Mar '04

25 Mar '04

Ah Variola...do I detect a wee bit of Knee-jerk in your otherwise consistently iconoclastic views? Let's take a looksee... >Get this through your head: a corporation can't initiate force against >you. >You may not like their product, practices, or price, but no one is >coercing you at gunpoint. Think I'm gonna have to disagree with ya' hear partner. For one, in the old days Corporations regularly hired goons to mow down striking coalminers and whatnot. OK, those days are all gone, right? Wrong. Halliburton and Bechtel have both hired mercs for their Iraq operations. (In fact, I was on a call a couple of weeks ago where a Halliburton official was describing the casualties they take on a regular basis. These don't get reported much in the news, though, for obvious reason...) However, a corporation doesn't actually have to hire the goons these days in order to get the job done, not when it's much cheaper to call upon the publically-available pool of goons that function as a government in some places. The fact that some corporations may leverage existing thuggery to get their job done doesn't make them any less complicit. But this is all besides my main point... >PS: you are a corporation, I am a corporation, together we could >be a corporation, with 100K others we could be too. Doesn't >matter; all have the same rights to act, and be left alone. Well, this is where I suspect a little knee-jerk. I'm no socialist: in no way am I saying that "Corporations are inherently evil". (In fact, I'm hoping to continue profiting admirably as the result of my participation in the capitalist system.) What I think bares investigation is whether or not, here in the US, a subset of the big corporations are so tied in with the political engine as to be complicit in the violations we both agree are occurring. As Max said so eloquently, this is not to imply that "we should make some laws and eliminate these big evil corporations". Or maybe it is (I dunno...I'm a stoopid Cypherpunk...). But I don't think it's inherently inconsistent to point out that there may be a direct correlation between the activities of our particular State and the interests of a subset of Large, Old-money-dominated US Coporations. -TD > > > >In fact, it's easy to argue that the > >current Oil Crusade in Iraq is precisely for the purpose of protecting >a set > >of dinosaur industries in the US. That's not the kind of capitalism I >think > >most Cypherpunks espouse. > >The state can legitimately only use taxpayers' armies to defend citizens >in the >country, not other countries, not its perceived-by-some self-interest, >not >corporations. All the oil colonialism is illegitimate for that reason, >as well >as illegal as Congress has not declared war. > > > _________________________________________________________________ Get reliable access on MSN 9 Dial-up. 3 months for the price of 1! (Limited-time offer) http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/dialup&pgmarket=en-us&ST=1/go/onm00200361ave…

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