March 2011 - cypherpunks-legacy

The Liberty Dollar
by Gary Jeffers 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

My fellow Cypherpunks, The Liberty Dollar My fellow Cypherpunks, I think I may have some really great news here, but you all can check it out to be sure. I found an alternative money on the Internet. It is called the Liberty Dollar. The Internet site is: http://www.norfed.org NORFED is The National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and the Internal Revenue Code. The money is backed by silver and gold and can be redeemed widely in America. As many of you know, the $US is a corrupt, proprietary, debt issued, fait, fractional reserved,illegal, unconstituional, U. S. State enforced monopoly currency. As corrupt as it is I don't know why it hasn't already collasped and dragged us down with it! If the Liberty Dollar is honest and robust, then it may be the vehical to beat the elite bankers tyranny and give us an honest wealth produced money. Yours Truly, Gary Jeffers BEAT STATE !!!!

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RE: Cypherpunks IQ Test
by Aimee Farr 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Mike: Are you often the victim of mercenary females? > -----Original Message----- > From: mmotyka(a)lsil.com [mailto:mmotyka@lsil.com] > Sent: Monday, March 05, 2001 3:28 PM > To: aimee.farr(a)pobox.com > Subject: Cypherpunks IQ Test > > > It's an obvious setup. The woods are part of a defense installation, > apple is filled with coke, the girl is underage, the woods are full of > trigger happy fibbies. > > You hit the ground and roll into the brush, drawing on the way. You > attempt to locate opponents and identify the safest route away from the > situation. > > Mike > > > >CYPHERPUNKS IQ TEST > > > >QUESTION #1. > > > >You are walking through the woods alone. A beautiful unclothed woman > >magically appears in front of you. She holds out an apple. > > > >1. Please darken in the correct choice using a Number Two pencil: > > > >(a) you bite the apple. > >(b) you take the woman. > >(c) you run away. > >(d) a and b, but not c. > >(e) b and c only. > >(f) all of the above. > >(g) none of the above. > > > >2. Please justify your answer: > > > > > >___________________________________________________________________. > > > > > >Just curious.... > > > > -Aimee

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More on "new physics"
by Tim May 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Someone sent me a private note. I have deleted his name for this public reply. > Tim May wrote: > > >> The "new physics" stuff is quite different. It is scorned in a way >> that plate tectonics was not, and for good reason. Folks should visit >> Bearden's site. http://www.cheniere.org/correspondence/index.html > > I did. Oh, dear. > > Not sure what is supposed to be denoted by "Tesla physics", but Tesla's > work with power transmission via HF is fascinating, even if there was > apparently no practical or safe use for it. No one disputes the outstanding work Tesla did on a.c. transmission. And anyone who has seen or used a Tesla coil knows how real it is. "Tesla physics" is all the cruft that has developed around some of his more obscure (and late) writings, usually mixed together with stuff Tesla could not have known about at the time of his death. To wit, the stuff about zero point energy and perpetual motion machines. And, sometimes, mixed together with the usual nutcase stuff about the Hollow Earth theory (zeta reticulans colonizing the hollow earth, Greys, underground UFO bases, secret Nazi weapons, etc.). Tesla is a hero to these "new physics" nuts, even though nothing Tesla ever worked on or built contradicts in the slightest way the predictions of Maxwell's theories. They take Tesla's very real contributions and some of his weirder theories (though none of them so weird as the Hollow Earth/antigravity/time reversal theories of modern nutters) and say that this means "They laughed at Tesla, they laugh at me!" BTW, I was/am an early ("angel") investor in a company doing work on ultrawideband transmissions. Some of the works Bearden cites, like those of Barrett, are familiar to me and others with this company. Saying that there is a role for ultrawideband pulse technology, a la spread spectrum and beyond SS, is NOT the same as saying there are confirmed "problems" with electromagnetic theory. There may be, and there are a handful of folks doing "foundational" work in E&M, but, so far, there are no indications that their foundational work is changing any engineering calculations. Quite the contrary, in my view. Electromagnetic theory basically "works"--to many decimal places of accuracy. Circuits work as expected, antennas work as expected, and there are no "unexplained observations" (as usually exist before a new theory arrives). There may be some _semantic_ issues, e.g., does a square wave or impulse "really" have components that were sent out _before_ the square wave or impulse? (A Fourier decomposition of a square wave starting at time t = 0 has "sine wave components" spread out over time and adding up in such a way as to give the square wave, or the impulse, or any other signal. Some think this means deep and mysterious things are happening, something having to do with time travel and reversing the aging process, blah blah blah. Henning Harmuth may write fairly eloquently about the "dogma of the circle" and how the Fourier decomposition of a signal into (allegedly) a near-infinite series of sine waves is "not real," but for all intents and purposes it all works. And the "new physics" people like Bearden go way beyond what Harmuth and Barrett are talking about: they bring in "curved space-time" and gravitation and antigravity and the ultra-weird notion that aging can be reversed by "pumping the conjugate time-axis of the Minkowski manifold" (OK, I made this up...don't have time to lift one of Bearden's direct quotes...and this will help train me in the jargon if I ever become a "new physicist."). Nut cases like Bearden have the patter of physics down. Very few actual physicists waste their time dissecting and refuting Bearden for obvious reasons. I urge readers of this list not to waste time on this stuff. --Tim May, Citizen-unit of of the once free United States " The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. "--Thomas Jefferson, 1787

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Re: A Trial Balloon to Ban Email?
by Declan McCullagh 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

At 09:57 AM 5/14/2003 -0400, Sunder wrote: >Yes, but how will you stop the spammer from double spending the same $0.25 >micropayment on all of his 170,000 email addresses? Depending on whether >you check that there is a payment attached or not, and also check it with >the bank before delivering it, you'd have already wasted your bandwith and >possibly have accepted a spam into your mail spool. It is true that the notions of micropayments as applied to spam (that I'm familiar with, at least) would require that the email recipient check with the bank to detect doublespending. This would introduce an additional delay before delivery from unknown senders, yes, but I fail to see how it would impose an unacceptable cost in bandwidth or CPU usage. Spammers could still try the same-micropayment-a-million-times route, just as they could try to spam without micropayments, but if their email is rejected in sufficient quantities, the cost to the spammer would outweigh the benefits. The key is achieving sufficient quantities. -Declan

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Re: AP Al Qaeda
by mattd 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

>>No, no. AP is funny because it's impracticeable. One does not find an assassin exclusively by tracing who paid him to kill. One can (and often does) find him because he makes a mistake in the act of commiting the crime. Which, if I'm >>reading my history right, is what's hampered the noisy proponents of AP up to this point already. Crime? Wot crime,guvnor? Jim and CJ were not 'noisy'.imo. Im a bit noisy cos Im pushing the 'let it all hang out' version. >The point is that Bell's theory does a really good job of sorting out the business end of assassination,...< Oh THATS funny.I get it. HAHAHA! >>Killing one person, especially a public official, pisses a whole bunch of people off. Those people have a tendency to come find their buddy's killer. Mmm,where do we start,lets get some firebrands and go up to the proffrs? Look at sites with no logs for quad anon 'predictors' who may be overseas briefly visiting cybercafes,Good luck china.(you just contradicted yrself btw.) Oh,unless you mean the torture/french village reprisal thang.Win friends and influence people. The one person killed will have had to have done a lot of evil shit to get enough pooled (presumably) to tempt a seasoned pro.Unless some professional killer turns all altruistic,stranger things have happened.The killer could be suicidal.another possibility.Lots of scenarios possible here,movie scripts,even.Pop songs,video games.DoCoMo assasinphones. Someone like a torturer,murderer,terrorist,pedophile is a logical candidate.(stephen roach?)Sometimes these happen to be public officials.Theres one here where I live named dennis Tanner.(vic.au) Those killers by remote control like arbusto might be be made more accountable. What better way than...Bell's theory, "a really good job of sorting out the business end of assassination"according to you. KILL THE PRESIDENT! "Id buy that for a dollar!" >>No kind of real or threatened assassination can weaken a government in which a majority of the governed people >believe. It can only make it seem more righteous and be more strong. Thats true,roll over and go back to sleep,if you live under that govt you have nothing to worry about. More righteous and more smug.

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Re: <nettime> Julian Assange Captured by World's Dating Police
by Michael Nelson 21 Apr '11

21 Apr '11

Dating police indeed. And as for this extra accusation, apparently admitted, that the sex was "unprotected"... A condom wouldn't have been that much use anyway -- when you're f*ck*ng with Assange there's always the possibility of a leak. Mike

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31 Mar '11

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by Drusilla Hortense 31 Mar '11

31 Mar '11

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31 Mar '11

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Authorities in Awe of Drug Runners' Jungle-Built, Kevlar-Coated Supersubs
by Eugen Leitl 31 Mar '11

31 Mar '11

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/ff_drugsub/all/1 Authorities in Awe of Drug Runners' Jungle-Built, Kevlar-Coated Supersubs By Jim Popkin Email Author March 29, 2011 | 12:00 pm | Wired April 2011 Photo: Christoph Morlinghaus The clatter of helicopter blades echoed across the jungles of northwestern Ecuador. Antinarcotics commandos in three choppers peered at the mangroves below, scanning for any sign of activity. The police had received a tip that a gang of Colombian drug smugglers had set up a clandestine work site here, in a dense swamp 5 miles south of Colombiabs border. And whatever the traffickers were building, the tipster had warned, was truly enormous. For decades, Colombian drug runners have pursued their trade with diabolical ingenuity, staying a step ahead of authorities by coming up with one innovation after another. When false-paneled pickups and tractor-trailers began drawing suspicion at US checkpoints, the cartels and their Mexican partners built air-conditioned tunnels under the border. When border agents started rounding up too many human mules, one group of Colombian smugglers surgically implanted heroin into purebred puppies. But the drug runnersb most persistently effective method has also been one of the crudestbsemisubmersible vessels that cruise or are towed just below the oceanbs surface and can hold a ton or more of cocaine. Assembled in secret shipyards along the Pacific coast, theybve been dubbed drug subs by the press, but theybre incapable of diving or maneuvering like real submarines. In fact, theybre often just cigarette boats encased in wood and fiberglass that are scuttled after a single mission. Yet despite their limitations, these semisubmersibles are notoriously difficult to track. US and Colombian officials estimate that the cartels have used them to ship hundreds of tons of cocaine from Colombia over the past five years alone. But several years ago, intelligence agencies began hearing that the cartels had made a technological breakthrough: They were constructing some kind of supersub in the jungle. According to the persistent rumors, the phantom vessel was an honest-to-goodness, fully functioning submarine with vastly improved rangebnothing like the disposable water coffins the Colombians had been using since the b90s. US law enforcement officials began to think of it as a sort of Loch Ness Monster, says one agent: b Never seen one before, never seized one before. But we knew it was out there.b Finally, the Ecuadoreans had enough information to launch a full-fledged raid. On July 2, 2010, a search partybincluding those three police helicopters, an armada of Ecuadorean navy patrol boats, and 150 well-armed police and sailorsbscoured the coastline near the Colombian border. When a patrol boat happened on some abandoned barrels in a clearing off the RC-o Molina, the posse moved in to find an astillero, or jungle shipyard, complete with spacious workshops, kitchens, and sleeping quarters for 40. The raid had clearly interrupted the workdaybrice pots from breakfast were still on the stove. And there was something else hastily abandoned in a narrow estuary: a 74-foot camouflaged submarinebnearly twice as long as a city busbwith twin propellers and a 5-foot conning tower, beached on its side at low tide. b It was incredible to find a submarine like that,b says rear admiral Carlos Albuja, who oversees Ecuadorean naval operations along the northwest coast. b Ibm not sure who built it, but they knew what they were doing.b Photo: Christoph Morlinghaus A cargo hold in the sub's bow can hold up to 9 tons of cocaine, worth about $250 million. Photo: Christoph Morlinghaus Four hundred miles away, at the US embassy in BogotC!, Jay Bergman received the news with a sense of vindication. As the US Drug Enforcement Agencybs top official in South America, Bergman had followed the chatter about a rumored supersub for yearsbeven as his colleagues remained deeply skeptical. But any satisfaction he felt was undercut by the implications of the discovery. The drug cartels continued to grow more sophisticated. If the DEA and other agencies hoped to keep up, theybd have to figure out how the traffickers built the sub, how to prevent them from building more, andbmost importantbhow to detect others that might already be out there. b This is a quantum leap in technology,b Bergman says over a breakfast of eggs and strong Colombian coffee at a BogotC! hotel. b It poses some formidable challenges.b The US governmentbs first step was a stern-to-snorkel assessment. Agents from the Farragut Technical Analysis Centerba branch of the US Office of Naval Intelligence that helps the Pentagon assess the capabilities of North Korean battleships and Russian nuclear subsbwent down to Ecuador. Over two days, the team broke down every aspect of the vesselbs construction. They examined the hull with an electron microscope and energy-dispersive x-ray to determine its composition. They pored over the technical capabilities of the subbs Chinese engines to calculate its range. And they studied the maximum amount of breathing time the crew would have underwater, without the aid of CO2 scrubbers, before theybd be forced to surface. The group summed up its findings in a 70-page white paperbmarked FOUO, for official use onlybthat conveys a grudging respect for the engineers and craftsmen who were able to build something so seaworthy in the middle of a swamp. b The streamlined hull, diesel-electric propulsion system, and fuel ballast system design all show a significant level of technical expertise and knowledge of submersible operations,b it states. The hull, they discovered, was made from a costly and exotic mixture of Kevlar and carbon fiber, tough enough to withstand modest ocean pressures but difficult to trace at sea. Like a classic German U-boat, the drug-running submarine uses diesel engines on the surface and battery-powered electric motors when submerged. With a crew of four to six, it has a maximum operational range of 6,800 nautical miles on the surface and can go 10 days without refueling. Packed with 249 lead-acid batteries, the behemoth can also travel silently underwater for up to 18 hours before recharging. The most valuable feature, though, is the cargo bay, capable of holding up to 9 tons of cocaineba street value of about $250 million. The vessel ferries that precious payload using a GPS chart plotter with side-scan capabilities and a high-frequency radiobessential gadgetry to ensure on-time deliveries. Therebs also an electro-optical periscope and an infrared camera mounted on the conning towerbvisual aids that supplement two miniature windows in the makeshift cockpit. Old go-kart steering wheels control the flippers for diving and surfacing. Photo: Christoph Morlinghaus Today the supersub sits propped on a pedestal like a trophy at Ecuadorbs naval command headquarters in Guayaquil, the countrybs largest city and main port. Fresh air is piped in to keep investigators cool, and a tin roof protects it from the elements. Inside, the captured sub looks like the garage of a failed inventor; exposed PVC pipe hangs from the ceiling, batteries and plastic tubing are littered throughout the cabin, electrical wires are patched to the walls without any apparent logic. Old go-kart steering wheels control flippers on the subbs exterior, helping it to dive and surface. Crew comfort seems to have been an afterthought. Standing room is precious, and there are no visible seats or bunks. During a recent tour, diesel fumes barely masked the powerful combination of urine and man-stink lingering months after the subbs discovery. Smuggling huge rolls of Kevlar, four engines, 249 back-breaking batteries, and thousands of obscure marine parts to a remote equatorial shipyard takes patience, money, and cojones. But does building a homemade submarine also take real smarts? The American and Colombian sub hunters seem to think so, but what do big government institutions know about hacking together a custom sub in a poorly equipped workshop? When powerful navies want a new submarine, they call defense contractors. To truly understand the complexities of building a sub from scratch, the real experts are a band of irrepressible hobbyists who build personal submarines in their backyards. Jon Wallace, a Unix software programmer for Hewlett-Packard, has headed the Personal Submersibles Organization, or Psubs, for 15 years. The group promotes the safe design, construction, and operation of personal submarines. It has 53 active members, mostly middle-aged American men b with their mortgage and kids under control,b Wallace says. Theybre the kind of guys who are willing to spend every weekend in their suburban garages hand-welding custom vessels, the better to explore the bottoms of nearby lakes. Construction can require years and a masterful sales pitch. b Itbs not that easy to say, bHoney, I just need $25,000 and the driveway for the next two years,b Wallace says. Psubs members have been tracking the development of the drug runnersb semisubmersible creations for years. And they havenbt been very impressed. b Five hundred grand for a snorkel semisub. Ha!b reads a typical posting on the Psubs website from 2009. b These guys may have a lot of money, but they are not the sharpest tools in the shed!b snorts another. But the towel-snapping ended with last summerbs discovery of the submarine in Ecuador. b This is the most sophisticated sub webve seen to date,b Wallace says. b Itbs a very good design in terms of shape and controls.b Anatomy of a Drug Sub The 74-foot vessel seized from a remote jungle shipyard in Ecuador is nothing like the crude semisubmersibles that Colombian drug runners have used in recent years. Here are some of the sophisticated craftbs standout features.bJ.P. Conning Tower A 5 B= foot tower with tiny windows, electro-optical periscope, and infrared camera provides a window on the world above while the bulk of the ship remains submerged. Batteries The subbs 249 lead-acid batteries power two electric motors, letting it run silently underwater for up to 18 hours before recharging. Main Engines On the surface, the vessel uses a pair of four-cylinder diesel engines to reach speeds up to 8.5 knots (10 mph), with a range of 6,800 nautical milesbroughly one round-trip from Colombia to San Diego. Hull The submarine is sheathed in Kevlar and carbon fiber instead of steel, making it hard to detect with sonar or radar. Itbs strong enough to withstand depths of up to 62 feet. Buoyancy System Compressed air is used to blow seawater out of more than a dozen ballast tanks, increasing the subbs buoyancy so it can surface. To dive, valves are opened to take in water. Illustration: Kristian Hammerstad The vessel, which never had a chance to take its maiden voyage, is by no means perfect. Its steel-free hull canbt withstand depths of more than 62 feet, according to the US Navybs technical assessment, a limitation that gives the pilot an incredibly narrow comfort zone. In other words, the slightest miscalculation in ballastbthe amount of seawater a sub takes in to divebcould spell disaster for the unwieldy, 16-foot-high vessel. Still, while they donbt approve of its purpose, the Psubs members confirm that the craft is an impressive piece of work. b Something like that would have taken a year or so in a modern shop,b says Vance Bradley, a member of the groupbs advisory council and a former professional submarine fabricator. b Imagine doing it out in the boonies with the mosquitoes and vermin!b That gets at one of the most vexing questions surrounding the sub: How was the beast actually built? According to Bergmanbs calculations, it must have cost at least $5 million to construct. Which drug gang would devote that kind of money to this black-market engineering project? Did they design it themselves, or did they recruit disaffected Russians or other foreign naval specialists? Were professional submarine pilots used to manage the tedious construction and begin underwater testing? Was it just a coincidence that so many of the parts were from China? Some answers can probably be deduced from the nearly three dozen old-school semisubmersibles that US and Colombian forces have confiscated since 2006bor from the 83 crew members who have been captured and prosecuted in that time, many of whom have traded information about the boats and their makers in exchange for reduced prison time. If their experience is an accurate guide, the supersub was likely built in sections in the backwoods Ecuadorean shipyard and then assembled at an adjacent estuary during low tide. Skilled engineers likely called the shots, directing teams of impoverished local laborers. Gas-powered generators may have been used, but the yearlong project would have been done mostly by hand without the help of electricity. Every bolt, pipe, and engine part would have been imported and laboriously smuggled in on small, canoe-like boats. Photo: Christoph Morlinghaus The sub was discovered on July 2, 2010, in an estuary in the jungles of Ecuador. Photo: Christoph Morlinghaus The Colombian cartels may be impressive and resourceful engineers today, but Miguel Angel Montoya knows that just a decade ago they were hopeless amateurs. A former drug-cartel associate who says he designed some of the early semisubmersibles, Montoya quit the business in 2001 and wrote a tell-all book (Yesterday a Doctor, Today a Narco-Trafficker). Hebs understandably cautious about his security and would agree to be interviewed only via email. In the early b90s, Montoya explains, his bosses had begun launching cocaine-smuggling vessels from the Colombian coast. At the time, most of the contraptions were laughableblike something out of those black-and-white newsreels of early flying machines that piteously crash into barns. Some looked like oversize bathtubs. Others resembled sea monsters with jutting pipes for necks. Montoya and his partners made their bosses a daring proposal: Let us help you design a new way to ferry cocaine underwater to Mexico. In 1999, Montoya and his associates began designing a finned, dart-shaped tube that could be crammed with cocaine and towed underwater by fishing trawlers to evade detection. His b narco torpedob was unmanned and carried radio transponders to locate it if traffickers had to ditch it on the open seas. When the torpedoes were ready to begin field-testing, Montoya says, he was escorted to a clandestine camp in Colombiabs remote coastal region south of Buenaventura. He recalls riding for hours through a labyrinth of rivers and unnamed tributaries. b The place was practically invisible from the air, and the jungle was impenetrable. We walked on planks set on swampland,b Montoya says. b The air was thick with chemical fumes from resins. Hundreds of workers lived there, and the roar of motorboats was always present. Theybd come and go by the dozens.b Laborers were converting boats into precarious semisubmersibles that local fishing boat captains would pilot to Mexico for a quick payoff. b Only poor people live in the area. Theybre in the Stone Age. Theybll give anything a go for very little money or food,b Montoya says. Montoya conducted practice runs with his makeshift torpedo in desolate local rivers and videotaped the launches. His bosses were enthusiastic and decided to give it a try. Montoyabs capsules carried loads up the Pacific coast for at least three years without a problem, delivering cocaine to Mexico for eventual sale in the US. When the Colombian navy finally confiscated one of the torpedoes, they marveled at the design and reverse-engineered it to better understand how it was builtbmuch as theybve done to the 54 other drug-toting semisubmersibles theybve captured. Montoya ultimately left the cartel in disillusionment. b I lost my family, my profession. I fell into drug and alcohol use,b he says. b My friends died or were in jail, and my head had a price on it. This is simply no way to earn a living, however glamorous and attractive it may seem.b Looking back, he says the Colombian cartels were honing their skills in preparation for their ultimate goalbthe construction of long-distance vessels that could dive and surface on command. What the drug lords have always wanted, he says, was their own fleet of fully functioning submarines. The D.E.A.bs Bergman thinks the drug lords may have finally achieved that dream. Immediately after the raid in Ecuador, Bergman publicly stated that he had to assume there were other such submarines operating throughout the region. About seven months later, on Valentinebs Day of 2011, he was proven correct when the Colombian navy announced that it had seized a second drug-running supersub. This one had also been built in the jungle. It was 101 feet long, could hold up to 8 tons of cocaine, and could withstand ocean depths of about 30 feet, Colombian officials said. b One is an aberration,b Bergman says. b Two is an emerging trend.b He presumes there are more. The prospect of Colombian drug traffickers running their own private navy poses problems that wonbt be solved with a few arrests. b This is one of those cases webre not going to divert our attention from. It has implications that go beyond law enforcement. It has national security implications,b Bergman says. After all, there is no reason the subs have to be limited to the drug trade. They could carry illegal immigrants or even terrorists, or be sold to the highest bidder for any number of nefarious purposes. Consequently, the supersubs are garnering high-level attention. Ecuadorean military brass briefed US defense secretary Robert Gates. And Bergmanbs DEA agents gave a lengthy presentation to Coast Guard and Pentagon officials with the Joint Interagency Task Force South, the Florida-based intelligence unit responsible for detecting drug-running semisubmersibles on the open sea. The task force works with law enforcement agenciesbwhich have unmanned aerial drones, Coast Guard cutters, and warships at their disposalbbut they wouldnbt comment on how they might try to locate the new long-range narco subs. Given the Navybs recent 70-page assessment, however, tracking them wonbt be so easy. b The vessel is assessed to be quiet, while operating under electric power, and potentially difficult to detect acoustically or by radar,b the Navy concludes. In the meantime, Montoya predicts that the jungle shipbuilders will continue to perfect their craft. b These efforts have been in the making for at least 17 years, since the time of Escobar,b he says. b It would be realistic to assume that there is a sub en route to Mexico or Europe at this very moment.b Photo: Christoph Morlinghaus Photo: Christoph Morlinghaus Jim Popkin (jim.popkin(a)gmail.com) is a writer and former head of the NBC News Investigative Unit.

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