March 2006 - cypherpunks-legacy

[Clips] 'A' Is for Anarchy
by R. A. Hettinga 17 Mar '06

17 Mar '06

--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2006 06:09:52 -0500 To: Philodox Clips List <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] 'A' Is for Anarchy Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com <http://opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110008105> OpinionJournal WSJ Online TASTE COMMENTARY 'A' Is for Anarchy Anarchism has gone from intellectually complicated and violent to just plain silly. BY TODD SEAVEY Friday, March 17, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST It might look like just another violent sci-fi film from the ads, but "V for Vendetta," opening in theaters across the country today, is the first superhero movie that's explicitly anarchist. Larry and Andy Wachowski, the producers, also brought us "The Matrix"--which ended, as you'll recall, with Neo's memorable anarchic warning to humanity's captors that he was going to "show them . . . a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries" and spark a revolution. The Wachowskis are now apparently trying something even more radical in adapting this comic-book story. The "V" film features some delightfully topsy-turvy casting. The man who played the enslaved Winston Smith in "1984" (John Hurt) now plays the fascistic leader of a future London. The man who played authoritarian Agent Smith in "The Matrix" (Hugo Weaving) now portrays a deranged freedom-fighter/terrorist wearing a Guy Fawkes mask (Fawkes being the real-life terrorist who tried to blow up the British Parliament 400 years ago). And the actress who was an elected queen in recent "Star Wars" films (Natalie Portman) now plays an oppressed journalist. But the greatest turnabout, if it actually occurs, will be audiences cheering for the hero of the film, who is a terrorist. Where did the ideas behind this movie come from, and why would we have any sympathy for them? London audiences may be particularly wary, recalling not only last year's jihadist bombings there but also, from the history books, anarchist bomb attacks on the London Underground in 1883 and 1896. The attacks were part of a campaign across Europe near the turn of the century, the inspiration for anarchist villains in novels by G.K. Chesteron, Joseph Conrad and others. America's own collective cultural memory of anarchism generally begins with the killing of eight Chicago police officers by anarchists in the 1886 Haymarket Riot, the assassination of President McKinley by an anarchist in 1901 and the murders committed by immigrant Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti in 1920 (they were indeed guilty, as their own lawyer admitted to a sympathetic Upton Sinclair, who kept the knowledge hidden for years). Anarchism, the idea that society would be better off without the constraints of government, has a long and often sordid history. What is arguably the first book urging the complete abolition of government, "A Vindication of Natural Society," was written 250 years ago by the man usually credited with founding conservatism, Edmund Burke. The British philosopher and politician, who served in the very Parliament building that Fawkes tried to destroy, argued that the same sort of anti-authoritarian reasoning that was being used in the 18th century to dispel religious belief could be used to undermine earthly political leaders. Scholars long accepted Burke's assurances later in life--when he had become a conservative member of the (generally liberal) Whig Party--that "Vindication" was merely satire. But 20th-century "anarcho-capitalist" economist Murray Rothbard argued that Burke's views had simply evolved over time and that Burke was embarrassed by his youthful ideological excesses. Indeed, anarchism has often been an attractive notion for young people. Paul Avrich, a historian of anarchism who died a few weeks ago in New York, suggested that James Joyce, Bernard Shaw and Eugene O'Neill were all anarchists early on in their intellectual development. Regardless of whether Burke's book was a satire, it was an inspiration to the man who first developed a full anarchist philosophy, William Godwin. He combined conservative religious sensibilities with Whig-inspired political arguments and communist-anarchist solutions to conclude that God-given goodness and the rational nature of human beings meant that the best outcomes would occur in the absence of force, thereby alleviating the need for both government and property. The utopian oddness of this view, whatever the sophistication of its argument, is a hallmark of anarchist reasoning. In the 19th century, anarchist radicals who, from our perspective, seem to have diametrically opposed views often thought of themselves as a united front, aligned against the political establishment. Many anarchists believed, then as now, that government and the free market should both wither away and allied themselves with Marxists. But there were also ardently capitalist anarchists, such as Lysander Spooner, who started his own profit-making postal service to compete with the U.S. government's lazy monopoly. Marxists found more in common with French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who famously declared that "property is theft!" Russian anarchists and communists found figures they could both admire in Michael Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin, who praised "mutual aid" as an alternative to top-down government. (One sees hints of Kropotkin's thought in things like the medical center quickly set up in New Orleans by the anarchist group Common Ground while the government floundered in the wake of Katrina.) Russia's most famous anarchist, though, was Leo Tolstoy, who said: "There are no crimes so revolting that they would not readily be committed by men who form part of a government." But Tolstoy, in stark contrast to the likes of the Haymarket murderers, appealed in the name of Christianity for an end to violence by soldiers and anarchists alike. (His countryman Dostoevsky was unconvinced and depicted anarchists as both dangerous and self-destructive in "The Devils.") For most of the 20th century, it must be acknowledged, anarchism functioned as little more than an adjunct to other, more popular, political movements: labor in the case of "anarcho-syndicalists" and left-anarchists such as Emma Goldman; capitalism in the case of anarchist libertarians like Rothbard; and hippie culture in the case of prankster chaos-worshippers like authors Robert Anton Wilson and Hakim Bey. As anarchism has aged and largely eschewed violence (fantasies like "V for Vendetta" notwithstanding), its members seem to have gone one of two routes, either becoming fringe figures who produce manifestoes and performance art of no great political impact or, ironically, choosing to replace the chaotic violence of old with allegiance to the more predictable, systematic coercion of laws and government. The ideal of the ending of all political control has gradually, perhaps inevitably, been pushed aside by the more familiar one of shaping political control to suit one's own agenda. In fact, modern so-called anarchists are usually working to increase government power. They form an important faction of the antiglobalization movement, agitating for stricter regulations on international trade. To judge by the sometimes violent protests at World Trade Organization conferences, the latest anarchists are usually grungy kids with strange hair and piercings; it is hard to say for certain, but they have probably spent more time listening to Rage Against the Machine and the Clash than reading Godwin or Proudhon. Perhaps the greatest evidence that there is little intellectual heft left in the anarchist movement is the occasional protests in Albany, N.Y., where self-proclaimed anarchists turn up to protest budget cuts at state-run schools. It's a satire Burke never could have dreamed of. Mr. Seavey edits HealthFactsAndFears.com (now part of the OpinionJournal Federation of sites). -- ----------------- 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' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list Clips(a)philodox.com http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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[programs@necsi.org: Special program on _Homeland and International Security_ at ICCS]
by Eugen Leitl 17 Mar '06

17 Mar '06

----- Forwarded message from NECSI Programs <programs(a)necsi.org> -----

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16 Mar '06

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[Clips] Painkiller
by R. A. Hettinga 16 Mar '06

16 Mar '06

--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 14:29:10 -0500 To: Philodox Clips List <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] Painkiller Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com <http://www.forbes.com/2006/03/03/emc-legal-discovery-cz_dl_0303emc_print.ht…> Forbes Legal Painkiller Daniel Lyons 03.03.06, 12:00 PM ET BOSTON - Companies have turned into data pack rats, stashing millions of e-mail files and other documents. And why not? Saving stuff is easy, and cheap, thanks to ever-declining prices on disk and tape drives. Just one problem: Some companies now have so much stuff saved that it takes forever to sift through mountains of material to find anything. Complying with discovery requests in a lawsuit can cost more than $1 million as companies sometimes need to hire extra staff to cull through records. "It's a very broken business process. Companies just don't have tools to do this in the right way," says Andrew Cohen, associate general counsel and compliance practice lead at EMC, the king of data storage hardware and software. "Sometimes the cost of discovery can be higher than whatever settlement ends up getting paid in a lawsuit." Seeing an opportunity, EMC this week rolled out an all-in-one "e-Discovery Solution" that combines EMC storage hardware, document management software and consulting services. The idea is to put a document storage infrastructure in place so that companies can find documents in less time. "We come at this in a proactive way, at a very high level," says Cohen. "We're saying you can save money by managing your information in a proactive and smarter way up front, by thinking about what information belongs in the repository and also by having the right tools to manage that information." Cohen, 41, knows first-hand how painful these discovery requests can be. For the past seven years he has been an associate general counsel at EMC, handling employment lawsuits and compliance issues. "We went through a lot of pain, and spent a lot of money just for data processing costs on some pretty routine discoveries. That got my attention," Cohen says. A year ago, Cohen changed hats and became a product manager of sorts, assembling a solution that EMC could sell to big corporations to help them manage legal discovery in a more efficient way. He says customers are eager to hear about EMC's solution. One of the first to sign up was MasterCard, the Purchase, N.Y.-based credit card issuer. For Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC, the push into services is all part of an ongoing transformation which began in 2001, when industry veteran JosephTucciJoseph Tucci took over as chief executive. In the 1990s, EMC had boomed simply by selling giant storage boxes to customers who had a seemingly unlimited appetite for disk space. But in recent years, things have changed. Though companies are still adding data at a fast clip, they're now looking for more than just big boxes. They also need help managing vast repositories of data, which can reside in different places and on different media--some on tape, some on various kinds of disk-based systems. Toward that end, over the past few years, EMC has quietly transformed itself into a seller of services and software to go with its hardware. Since 2003, the company has spent $4 billion acquiring more than a dozen software companies, including Documentum, Legato and VMware. EMC also has created a 9,000-employee services division whose consultants help customers develop strategies for managing giant repositories of data. EMC calls this "information life cycle management." Tucci's push into software and services has paid off. In 2005, those two areas accounted for slightly more than 50% of EMC's overall revenues. Last year, EMC earned $1.1 billion on sales of $9.7 billion, up from $871 million on sales of $8.2 billion in 2004. Looking ahead, this year analysts expect EMC to reap revenues of just over $11 billion. -- ----------------- 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' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list Clips(a)philodox.com http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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16 Mar '06

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None
by H. Lally Singh 16 Mar '06

16 Mar '06

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16 Mar '06

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16 Mar '06

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Re: Justin Berry and related incidents
by Greg Rider 15 Mar '06

15 Mar '06

The jya@cryptome address is saying mailbox full, so I've forwarded my reply to you here at jfet.org... Let me know if what you think of our site, see below (and pls do not distribute it yet) > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Greg Rider <gregory.rider(a)gmail.com> > Date: Mar 13, 2006 4:03 PM > Subject: Re: Justin Berry and related incidents > To: John Young <jya(a)cryptome.net> > > > Hi John, > > After speaking with some friends who respect what you've done in the > past, I've decided to provide you with a direct link to a site we're > going to announce in the next 2 weeks called WIKITRUTH.INFO. Please > do not announce this site or spread out this URL as we're still > working on some things. > > I think you will find this to be of interest: > > http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Uncensored:Justin_Berry > http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Talk:Uncensored:Justin_Berry > http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Wikitruth:Justin_Berry > > Right now the hot topic is the article for Jack Thompson (attorney), > while Justin Berry is being pushed under the rug by Wikipedia > administrators, arguing that if facts of note do not dignify the > subject, they should not be included. (!) Truly frightening. > > > The reason I'm giving you a link to this project early on is I wanted > to invite you to join it. There is no commitment, I just ask that you > pick a unique and anonymous username. > > If you're interested in helping out here and there, just let me know > what username you'd like and I will create an account for you. > Otherwise, feel free to visit the new site any > time.

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speaking of weak primes, weak exponents?
by coderman 15 Mar '06

15 Mar '06

Qi Cheng is not aware of any further work on "A New Class of Unsafe Primes" - http://eprint.iacr.org/2002/109 , which was mentioned here recently (thanks Peter). not a big deal or something to be concerned about? (the speed improvement shown makes me think this should be a check performed for all prime selection in any pubkey system, even if it is unlikely) also curious if anyone has insight on the following as potential pitfalls to avoid when implementing / generating RSA: --- http://eprint.iacr.org/2006/093 "RSA and a higher degree diophantine equation ... Let $N=pq$ be an RSA modulus where $p$, $q$ are large primes of the same bitsize. We study the class of the public exponents $e$ for which there exist an integer $m$ with $1\leq m\leq {\log{N}\over \log{32}}$ and small integers $u$, $X$, $Y$ and $Z$ satisfying $$(e+u)Y^m-\psi(N)X^m=Z,$$ where $\psi(N)=(p+1)(q-1)$. First we show that these exponents are of improper use in RSA cryptosystems." --- http://eprint.iacr.org/2006/092 "Cryptanalysis of RSA with constrained keys ... We show that choosing a public key exponent $e$ for which there exist positive integers $X$, $Y$ such that $\left\vert eY-XF(u)\right\vert$ and $Y$ are suitably small, then the system is insecure." --- one last related item, large qubit quantum computers: --- http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg05835.html bulk quantum computation Travis H. Here's a 1997 paper on "quantum computing in the large" that I had been asking about: http://www.media.mit.edu/physics/projects/spins/home.html "Neil Gershenfeld and Isaac Chuang have developed an entirely new approach to quantum computation that promises to solve many of these problems. Instead of carefully isolating a small number of qubits, we use a large thermal ensemble (such as a cup of coffee). Such a system has ~10^23 degrees of freedom; by applying RF pulses that excite nuclear magnetic resonances, we can create a tiny deviation from equilibrium that acts just like a much smaller number of pure qubits."

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