June 2004 - cypherpunks-legacy

SciAm: The Mystery of the Voynich Manuscript
by R. A. Hettinga 29 Jun '04

29 Jun '04

<http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=0000E3AA-70E1-10CF-AD19834…> Scientific American: June 21, 2004 The Mystery of the Voynich Manuscript New analysis of a famously cryptic medieval document suggests that it contains nothing but gibberish By Gordon Rugg In 1912 Wilfrid Voynich, an American rare-book dealer, made the find of a lifetime in the library of a Jesuit college near Rome: a manuscript some 230 pages long, written in an unusual script and richly illustrated with bizarre images of plants, heavenly spheres and bathing women. Voynich immediately recognized the importance of his new acquisition. Although it superficially resembled the handbook of a medieval alchemist or herbalist, the manuscript appeared to be written entirely in code. Features in the illustrations, such as hairstyles, suggested that the book was produced sometime between 1470 and 1500, and a 17th-century letter accompanying the manuscript stated that it had been purchased by Rudolph II, the Holy Roman Emperor, in 1586. During the 1600s, at least two scholars apparently tried to decipher the manuscript, and then it disappeared for nearly 250 years until Voynich unearthed it. Voynich asked the leading cryptographers of his day to decode the odd script, which did not match that of any known language. But despite 90 years of effort by some of the world's best code breakers, no one has been able to decipher Voynichese, as the script has become known. The nature and origin of the manuscript remain a mystery. The failure of the code-breaking attempts has raised the suspicion that there may not be any cipher to crack. Voynichese may contain no message at all, and the manuscript may simply be an elaborate hoax. Critics of this hypothesis have argued that Voynichese is too complex to be nonsense. How could a medieval hoaxer produce 230 pages of script with so many subtle regularities in the structure and distribution of the words? But I have recently discovered that one can replicate many of the remarkable features of Voynichese using a simple coding tool that was available in the 16th century. The text generated by this technique looks much like Voynichese, but it is merely gibberish, with no hidden message. This finding does not prove that the Voynich manuscript is a hoax, but it does bolster the long-held theory that an English adventurer named Edward Kelley may have concocted the document to defraud Rudolph II. (The emperor reportedly paid a sum of 600 ducats--equivalent to about $50,000 today--for the manuscript.) Perhaps more important, I believe that the methods used in this analysis of the Voynich mystery can be applied to difficult questions in other areas. Tackling this hoary puzzle requires expertise in several fields, including cryptography, linguistics and medieval history. As a researcher into expert reasoning--the study of the processes used to solve complex problems--I saw my work on the Voynich manuscript as an informal test of an approach that could be used to identify new ways of tackling long-standing scientific questions. The key step is determining the strengths and weaknesses of the expertise in the relevant fields. Baby God's Eye? The first purported decryption of the Voynich manuscript came in 1921. William R. Newbold, a professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, claimed that each character in the Voynich script contained tiny pen strokes that could be seen only under magnification and that these strokes formed an ancient Greek shorthand. Based on his reading of the code, Newbold declared that the Voynich manuscript had been written by 13th-century philosopher-scientist Roger Bacon and described discoveries such as the invention of the microscope. Within a decade, however, critics debunked Newbold's solution by showing that the alleged microscopic features of the letters were actually natural cracks in the ink. The Voynich manuscript appeared to be either an unusual code, an unknown language or a sophisticated hoax. Newbold's attempt was just the start of a string of failures. In the 1940s amateur code breakers Joseph M. Feely and Leonell C. Strong used substitution ciphers that assigned Roman letters to the characters in Voynichese, but the purported translations made little sense. At the end of World War II the U.S. military cryptographers who cracked the Japanese Imperial Navy's codes passed some spare time tackling ciphertexts--encrypted texts--from antiquity. The team deciphered every one except the Voynich manuscript. In 1978 amateur philologist John Stojko claimed that the text was written in Ukrainian with the vowels removed, but his translation--which included sentences such as "Emptiness is that what Baby God's Eye is fighting for"--did not jibe with the manuscript's illustrations nor with Ukrainian history. In 1987 a physician named Leo Levitov asserted that the document had been produced by the Cathars, a heretical sect that flourished in medieval France, and was written in a pidgin composed of words from various languages. Levitov's translation, though, was at odds with the Cathars' well-documented theology. Furthermore, all these schemes used mechanisms that allowed the same Voynichese word to be translated one way in one part of the manuscript and a different way in another part. For example, one step in Newbold's solution involved the deciphering of anagrams, which is notoriously imprecise: the anagram ADER, for instance, can be interpreted as READ, DARE or DEAR. Most scholars agree that all the attempted decodings of the Voynich manuscript are tainted by an unacceptable degree of ambiguity. Moreover, none of these methods could encode plaintext--that is, a readable message--into a ciphertext with the striking properties of Voynichese. If the manuscript is not a code, could it be an unidentified language? Even though we cannot decipher the text, we know that it shows an extraordinary amount of regularity. For instance, the most common words often occur two or more times in a row. To represent the words, I will use the European Voynich Alphabet (EVA), a convention for transliterating the characters of Voynichese into Roman letters. An example from folio 78R of the manuscript reads: qokedy qokedy dal qokedy qokedy. This degree of repetition is not found in any known language. Conversely, Voynichese contains very few phrases where two or three different words regularly occur together. These characteristics make it unlikely that Voynichese is a human language--it is simply too different from all other languages. The third possibility is that the manuscript was a hoax devised for monetary gain or that it is some mad alchemist's meaningless ramblings. The linguistic complexity of the manuscript seems to argue against this theory. In addition to the repetition of words, there are numerous regularities in the internal structure of the words. The common syllable qo, for instance, occurs only at the start of words. The syllable chek may appear at the start of a word, but if it occurs in the same word as qo, then qo always comes before chek. The common syllable dy usually appears at the end of a word and occasionally at the start but never in the middle. A simple "pick and mix" hoax that combines the syllables at random could not produce a text with so many regularities. Voynichese is also much more complex than anything found in pathological speech caused by brain damage or psychological disorders. Even if a mad alchemist did construct a grammar for an invented language and then spent years writing a script that employed this grammar, the resulting text would not share the various statistical features of the Voynich manuscript. For example, the word lengths of Voynichese form a binomial distribution--that is, the most common words have five or six characters, and the occurrence of words with greater or fewer characters falls off steeply from that peak in a symmetric bell curve. This kind of distribution is extremely unusual in a human language. In almost all human languages, the distribution of word lengths is broader and asymmetric, with a higher occurrence of relatively long words. It is very unlikely that the binomial distribution of Voynichese could have been a deliberate part of a hoax, because this statistical concept was not invented until centuries after the manuscript was written. Expert Reasoning In summary, the Voynich manuscript appeared to be either an extremely unusual code, a strange unknown language or a sophisticated hoax, and there was no obvious way to resolve the impasse. It so happened that my colleague Joanne Hyde and I were looking for just such a puzzle a few years ago. We had been developing a method for critically reevaluating the expertise and reasoning used in the investigation of difficult research problems. As a preliminary test, I applied this method to the research on the Voynich manuscript. I started by determining the types of expertise that had previously been applied to the problem. The assessment that the features of Voynichese are inconsistent with any human language was based on substantial relevant expertise from linguistics. This conclusion appeared sound, so I proceeded to the hoax hypothesis. Most people who have studied the Voynich manuscript agreed that Voynichese was too complex to be a hoax. I found, however, that this assessment was based on opinion rather than firm evidence. There is no body of expertise on how to mimic a long medieval ciphertext, because there are hardly any examples of such texts, let alone hoaxes of this genre. Several researchers, such as Jorge Stolfi of the University of Campinas in Brazil, had wondered whether the Voynich manuscript was produced using random text-generation tables. These tables have cells that contain characters or syllables; the user selects a sequence of cells--perhaps by throwing dice--and combines them to form a word. This technique could generate some of the regularities within Voynichese words. Under Stolfi's method, the table's first column could contain prefix syllables, such as qo, that occur only at the start of words; the second column could contain midfixes (syllables appearing in the middle of words) such as chek, and the third column could contain suffix syllables such as y. Choosing a syllable from each column in sequence would produce words with the characteristic structure of Voynichese. Some of the cells might be empty, so that one could create words lacking a prefix, midfix or suffix. English adventurer Edward Kelley may have concocted the document to defraud Rudolph II, the Holy Roman Emperor. Other features of Voynichese, however, are not so easily reproduced. For instance, some characters are individually common but rarely occur next to each other. The characters transcribed as a, e and l are common, as is the combination al, but the combination el is very rare. This effect cannot be produced by randomly mixing characters from a table, so Stolfi and others rejected this approach. The key term here, though, is "randomly." To modern researchers, randomness is an invaluable concept. Yet it is a concept developed long after the manuscript was created. A medieval hoaxer probably would have used a different way of combining syllables that might not have been random in the strict statistical sense. I began to wonder whether some of the features of Voynichese might be side effects of a long-obsolete device. The Cardan Grille It looked as if the hoax hypothesis deserved further investigation. My next step was to attempt to produce a hoax document to see what side effects emerged. The first question was, Which techniques to use? The answer depended on the date when the manuscript was produced. Having worked in archaeology, a field in which dating artifacts is an important concern, I was wary of the general consensus among Voynich researchers that the manuscript was created before 1500. It was illustrated in the style of the late 1400s, but this attribute did not conclusively pin down the date of its origin; artistic works are often produced in the style of an earlier period, either innocently or to make the document look older. I therefore searched for a coding technique that was available during the widest possible range of origin dates--between 1470 and 1608. A promising possibility was the Cardan grille, which was introduced by Italian mathematician Girolamo Cardano in 1550. It consists of a card with slots cut in it. When the grille is laid over an apparently innocuous text produced with another copy of the same card, the slots reveal the words of the hidden message. I realized that a Cardan grille with three slots could be used to select permutations of prefixes, midfixes and suffixes from a table to generate Voynichese-style words. A typical page of the Voynich manuscript contains about 10 to 40 lines, each consisting of about eight to 12 words. Using the three-syllable model of Voynichese, a single table of 36 columns and 40 rows would contain enough syllables to produce an entire manuscript page with a single grille. The first column would list prefixes, the second midfixes and the third suffixes; the following columns would repeat that pattern. You can align the grille to the upper left corner of the table to create the first word of Voynichese and then move it three columns to the right to make the next word. Or you can move the grille to a column farther to the right or to a lower row. By successively positioning the grille over different parts of the table, you can create hundreds of Voynichese words. And the same table could then be used with a different grille to make the words of the next page. I drew up three tables by hand, which took two or three hours per table. Each grille took two or three minutes to cut out. (I made about 10.) After that, I could generate text as fast as I could transcribe it. In all, I produced between 1,000 and 2,000 words this way. I found that this method could easily reproduce most of the features of Voynichese. For example, you can ensure that some characters never occur together by carefully designing the tables and grilles. If successive grille slots are always on different rows, then the syllables in horizontally adjacent cells in the table will never occur together, even though they may be very common individually. The binomial distribution of word lengths can be generated by mixing short, medium-length and long syllables in the table. Another characteristic of Voynichese--that the first words in a line tend to be longer than later ones--can be reproduced simply by putting most of the longer syllables on the left side of the table. The Cardan grille method therefore appears to be a mechanism by which the Voynich manuscript could have been created. My reconstructions suggest that one person could have produced the manuscript, including the illustrations, in just three or four months. But a crucial question remains: Does the manuscript contain only meaningless gibberish or a coded message? I found two ways to employ the grilles and tables to encode and decode plaintext. The first was a substitution cipher that converted plaintext characters to midfix syllables that are then embedded within meaningless prefixes and suffixes using the method described above. The second encoding technique assigned a number to each plaintext character and then used these numbers to specify the placement of the Cardan grille on the table. Both techniques, however, produce scripts with much less repetition of words than Voynichese. This finding indicates that if the Cardan grille was indeed used to make the Voynich manuscript, the author was probably creating cleverly designed nonsense rather than a ciphertext. I found no evidence that the manuscript contains a coded message. This absence of evidence does not prove that the manuscript was a hoax, but my work shows that the construction of a hoax as complex as the Voynich manuscript was indeed feasible. This explanation dovetails with several intriguing historical facts: Elizabethan scholar John Dee and his disreputable associate Edward Kelley visited the court of Rudolf II during the 1580s. Kelley was a notorious forger, mystic and alchemist who was familiar with Cardan grilles. Some experts on the Voynich manuscript have long suspected that Kelley was the author. My undergraduate student Laura Aylward is currently investigating whether more complex statistical features of the manuscript can be reproduced using the Cardan grille technique. Answering this question will require producing large amounts of text using different table and grille layouts, so we are writing software to automate the method. This study yielded valuable insights into the process of reexamining difficult problems to determine whether any possible solutions have been overlooked. A good example of such a problem is the question of what causes Alzheimer's disease. We plan to examine whether our approach could be used to reevaluate previous research into this brain disorder. Our questions will include: Have the investigators neglected any field of relevant expertise? Have the key assumptions been tested sufficiently? And are there subtle misunderstandings between the different disciplines that are involved in this work? If we can use this process to help Alzheimer's researchers find promising new directions, then a medieval manuscript that looks like an alchemist's handbook may actually prove to be a boon to modern medicine. GORDON RUGG became interested in the Voynich manuscript about four years ago. At first he viewed it as merely an intriguing puzzle, but later he saw it as a test case for reexamining complex problems. He earned his Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Reading in 1987. Now a senior lecturer in the School of Computing and Mathematics at Keele University in England, Rugg is editor in chief of Expert Systems: The International Journal of Knowledge Engineering and Neural Networks. His research interests include the nature of expertise and the modeling of information, knowledge and beliefs. ) 1996-2004 Scientific American, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. -- ----------------- 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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My name is Jyyneh Do'ughh
by Major Variola (ret) 29 Jun '04

29 Jun '04

Gaelic looks like 7-ASCII-bit line noise to me. A Gaelic name could be created which clueless fascists would assume the spelling of, but the correct spelling would be fairly far (in some linguistic Hamming metric) from the assumed spelling. How do you spell John Smith in Gaelic? Just a thought.

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VeriSign service takes on spam
by R. A. Hettinga 29 Jun '04

29 Jun '04

...A whitelist for my friends... Cheers, RAH ------- <http://news.com.com/2102-7355_3-5250010.html?tag=st.util.print> CNET News VeriSign service takes on spam By Dinesh C. Sharma Special to CNET News.com http://news.com.com/2100-7355-5250010.html Story last modified June 28, 2004, 8:11 AM PDT VeriSign on Monday announced a new e-mail security service designed to stop viruses and spam. The service uses custom blacklists, fingerprinting and heuristic tools, which calculate the probability that a particular e-mail message is spam by examining a pattern of characteristics in the message. VeriSign's heuristic tools use more than 10,000 rules to determine whether a message is spam, the company said. For blocking malicious mail, the service deploys three antivirus engines. For policy enforcement, customers can use domain-level filtering to scan inbound and outbound e-mail. And a disaster recovery feature allows for automatic switchover to VeriSign's network to provide SMTP connections that queue e-mail, if a company's e-mail server is not available. The company has begun free trials of the service, which will be available on July 12. Pricing details were not announced. VeriSign said it plans to add more functions, such as verification of sender identity and domain authentication. Domain names of all incoming mail will be checked against the company's list of verified domains. This list will be made available free to antispam software and service providers. Although e-mail has become a critical tool for business communication, it is often saddled with problems caused by spam, viruses and worms. Last week, malicious software infected some Web sites, redirecting visitors to a Russian server that downloaded software onto surfers' computers. Some have speculated that the purpose of this malicious plan was spam distribution. Recently, IBM introduced a security management service to help businesses stop viruses and spam before they enter their networks. "The introduction of this service will help enterprises restore the productivity gains from e-mail communication that are now under threat from spam and viruses," Judy Lin, executive vice president at VeriSign, said in a statement. "With a service-oriented approach, enterprises can easily obtain comprehensive e-mail protection in a matter of hours, without deploying any software or hardware. This service will enable customers to rely on VeriSign's highly available and scalable infrastructure for mission-critical functions." -- ----------------- 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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Privacy fears on welfare offensive
by R. A. Hettinga 29 Jun '04

29 Jun '04

Try not to laugh too hard, now, boys and girls... Cheers, RAH ------- <http://australianit.news.com.au/common/print/0,7208,9982358%5E15319%5E%5Enb…> Australian IT Privacy fears on welfare offensive Karen Dearne JUNE 29, 2004 THE crackdown on welfare cheats is hotting up as more federal police are assigned to help Centrelink track social security fraud identified by data matching. Centrelink gained access to AusTRAC's financial transactions database earlier this year and took on 46 specialists to deal with the increased cross-matching and analysis workload. Centrelink also does online matching with Australian Tax Office and Immigration Department databases. Justice Minister Chris Ellison and Children and Youth Affairs Minister Larry Anthony have agreed to more than double, from four to 10, the number of AFP agents posted to Centrelink's fraud investigation teams. They expect the move to result in 1200 extra investigations this year, rising to 3000 in 2006-07 with projected net savings of $60 million over four years. Centrelink's access to AusTRAC resources was aimed at cracking down on "high-end welfare cheats", they said. According to AusTRAC data, about 5 per cent of suspicious transaction reports concern social security fraud - about 400 cases a year. The Child Support Agency and the Department of Veterans' Affairs were also given access to AusTRAC data. "As techniques to perpetrate fraud against the social security system are becoming more sophisticated, the AFP and Centrelink are working more closely to put law enforcement one step ahead of criminals trying to defraud the system," Senator Ellison and Mr Anthony said. "Australia has a generous welfare system and the Government recognises that most people are honest. "However, there are always some people who take more than their share. "Taxpayers can rest assured that Centrelink and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) are making sure people are only paid their correct entitlement - no more, no less." The Australian Privacy Foundation has expressed concern about the large expansion of citizens' data-matching occurring between AusTRAC and other agencies, at a time when AusTRAC is taking on increased responsibilities for international money laundering and terrorist financing reform. "We objected very strongly to the extension of access to Centrelink, Child Support and Veterans' Affairs when the legislation went through late last year," APF convenor Nigel Waters said. "It was a major extension of the scheme. "We've also put in a very strong submission about the proposed extension of AusTRAC's operations under changes to the Financial Transactions Reporting Act. "We believe this is one of the most dangerous developments yet, because it basically extends that sort of spying routine that banks already do on their customers to other people, like real estate agents." Australian Consumers Association IT policy spokesman Charles Britton said AusTRAC appeared to be positioning itself as a manager of citizens' identity data, rather than a cash transactions manager. "It's a subtle change, but AusTRAC appears to be taking on that identity manager role, particularly as far as government agencies are concerned," Mr Britton said. "I'm sure it's within their charter, I'm not suggesting it's not, but they seem to be emphasising an aspect to their work that isn't exactly what springs to people's minds in relation to AusTRAC." Mr Waters said the APF was concerned that there was no independent oversight of AusTRAC's activities. "Part of the problem is that they don't claim to be exercising any independent judgment," he said. "AusTRAC says it is just a clearing house, so it can't be blamed for the way information is used. "That comes down to the law enforcement agencies, the Australian Tax office (ATO) and Centrelink. "We think that's totally inadequate." -- ----------------- 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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Unregistered
by Thomas Shaddack 29 Jun '04

29 Jun '04

Found this on the Net couple years ago. Then it vanished. In the light of the INDUCE Act, or whatever it's called now, it is becoming quite relevant... Question for the crowd: In the setting described below, how could one perform a successful long-term disobedience? Original URL: www.keshet.f2s.com/unregistered.html Downloaded Sep 1 2001 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Unregistered Dark and drizzle, we pulled up in front of the living block; we had a an AC tip on one of the residents -- nothing concrete, maybe trafficking in illegal copies, maybe just pron, we weren't sure. "Can I help you?" our suspect asked, innocently enough, as he opened the door. "Yah, we got a warrant - need to scan your disk." I held up the warrant in one hand while the other reflexively went for the scanner. "What seems to be the problem officers?" he says... boy if this guy is hiding something he sure can act it. This is the point when I watch the suspect most closely -- looking not just for fear or guilt, but any kind of movement which may trigger an erase mechanism. "Nothing special," I try to smooth him over, "just a routine search, maybe we just got a bad tip." "Well, okay.." he didn't seem too sure of his ground. I didn't like it, he should be outraged, or afraid or something. My partner printed up a receipt while I activated the scanner. 3 seconds later I'm looking at the output, scratching my head- no contraband on the disk but the scanner flagged some unusual files. "What's this?" I ask the guy, showing him the readout. "Oh, those are mine," he said with such an innocent look I was caught off balance. I connect to Central and send the digital signatures for look-up & verify.. Central drew a blank. "Unknown registry authority" was the response for each one of the signed executables. "Where did you get these?" I ask the suspect while copying the binaries into quarantined flash for later dissection. "Those? I made them." Again that look of pure innocence. I was getting a creepy feeling at the back of my neck. "Whadd'ya mean, you made them? Look, we're gonna find out where those execs came from and what they do.. it's gonna start getting real unpleasant in here real fast if you don't start coming up with answers quick!" I don't like coming down heavy so fast on a guy, but these files were starting to give me the creeps. "Look man, I'm a programmer - that's what I do. I can show you the source & compile it for you if you like..." Stunned, I look at the guy, my partner's already going for a tackle with the cuffs. "You got a compiler in here!?" I shout at him. "Jesus HC," I'm swearing at myself for being so slow. "Call Central!" I'm yelling at my partner while I signal for backup, "tell 'em to put a packet freeze on the whole damn block! Tell 'em we got an unregistered compiler!" I swear to God, even while they were hauling him away & forensics were scanning the building, he still had that innocent look on his face -- like he didn't even know what was going on. All Text and Art Original Material Copyright © 2001 <a href="mailto:siteinfo@kashat.net">keshet</a>

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my name is Doe, John Doe
by Eugen Leitl 29 Jun '04

29 Jun '04

Has anyone ever legally changed his name to John Doe, and documented the results, if any? -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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Silicon carbide in the machine
by Major Variola (ret) 29 Jun '04

29 Jun '04

At 04:20 PM 6/28/04 +0200, Nomen Nescio wrote: >From: a.melon@ >Major Variola (ret) (mv(a)cdc.gov) wrote on 2004-06-27: >> Any signal you put out is trackable to you geographically, whether its >> a cell or GPS frequency. > >A GPS receiver doesn't broadcast its location. GPS works purely by >analyzing the signals received from satellites. This is probably a design >goal for military use, as well as a consequence of power requirements. Yes. But a jammer will draw a Hellfire. >There is no such thing as a GPS frequency. I beg to differ, there are (perhaps >1) RF freq assigned to the Constellation. It seems that for CDMA or >WCDMA phones the location service is defined in terms of messages on the >normal network layer, see a Google search for "position determination service >order". Yes its cheaper and allowed (for now) to triangulate (to what, 100m?) using physics; but GPS will become cheaper and cheaper.

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your papers please
by Major Variola (ret) 28 Jun '04

28 Jun '04

>Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 01:23:43 -0400 >From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> >To: politech(a)politechbot.com >Subject: [Politech] More on open letter to PFIR on "Whois" privacy [priv] >My own views, for what they're worth, are in a column here: >http://news.com.com/Privacy+reduction's+next+act/2010-1028_3-5155054.html > >An excerpt: >If you buy a domain name, current regulations created by the Internet >Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) say you must make >public "accurate and reliable contact details and promptly correct and >update them during the term of the...registration, including: the full >name, postal address, e-mail address, voice telephone number, and fax >number." >Who wants to make that kind of personal information public for the >benefit of spammers, direct marketers and snoops? You shouldn't have to >publish your home address--and other personal details--to everyone in >the world just to own a domain name. And if you decide to lie by typing >in "1 Nowhere Road," I don't see why you should be punished for >attempting to protect your and your family's privacy. >There are plenty of legitimate reasons why domain name holders might >leave their address blank. [...] >These rights to anonymity are enshrined in the Bill of Rights, both in >the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech, and in the >Ninth Amendment, which was intended to curb government's power. [...] > >-Declan D McC is right on the mark, as usual. D McC is a national treasure, in the Nip sense. You rape the constitution, we go for head shots. Any questions, punk?

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Re: [Politech] Privacy Villain: No-fly stonewallers at FBI, TSA [priv]
by Major Variola (ret) 28 Jun '04

28 Jun '04

At 01:44 PM 6/24/04 -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote: >Subject: [NCCP] Privacy Villain: No-fly stonewallers >Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2004 16:59:12 -0400 >From: J Plummer <jplummer(a)consumeralert.org> > > >Privacy Hero of the Week: >No-fly stonewallers > >By James Plummer > >US District Court Judge Charles Breyer for Northern California ruled this >week that the FBI and the Transportation Security Agency have been >illegally stonewalling Freedom of Information Act requests by travelers >demanding details on the so-called "no-fly" list which grounded them. ><http://www1.law.ucla.edu/~volokh/blog_data/gordon.pdf> > >The action was brought by two antiwar activists and journalists who were >detained at San Francisco International Airport because their names were on >the list. Rebecca Gordon and Janet Adams demanded information about the >list, including how many people are on it, and how travelers get added or >removed. > >Both agencies repeatedly claimed such information was classified and >"sensitive." Judge Breyer ruled such claims were "frivolous" and said the >government "has not come close" to meeting its legal obligations. Gordon, Adams, and Breyer are American Heroes. For the rest, I'll bring the rope.

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We're jamming, we hope you like jammin' too
by Major Variola (ret) 28 Jun '04

28 Jun '04

At 05:51 AM 6/29/04 +0200, Thomas Shaddack wrote: >On Mon, 28 Jun 2004, Major Variola (ret) wrote: >> Yes. But a jammer will draw a Hellfire. > >A $50 jammer for a $500,000 missile. Sounds like a fair trade to me. ;) During the Yugo colonization, microwave ovens with their doorlocks disabled were used as spoof targets. >Which is good, because once the adversary starts relying exclusively on >GPS and lets the other monitoring systems decay, we have easier way to >"deny that service" from our handhelds. Physics is more difficult to cheat >than chips. Agreed, single points of failure are Allah's gift to mankind.

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