July 2018 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Jack Straw on the 'Today' programme
by Ken Brown 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

Ian Miller wrote: > > Jack Straw has just been interviewed on the BBC4 Today programme. After > talking untypically good sense on his recent round of diplomacy, he > finished off with a rant against the press for daring to criticise his > efforts to regulate encryption, suggesting it was this that prevented > catching the WTC terrorists before they struck. He also seemed to be > assuming that, in the light of recent events, we would all agree with him > now. > > It sounded to me very like he was diverging from his script, and expressing > his own personal frustration, so we shouldn't assume it necessarily signals > anything about government policy. Albeit he is probably saying the same > sort of nonsense in cabinet. I heard it as well. It made me angry. Angry enough to waste 20 minutes ranting. It does seem as if Straw was taking it personally. My guess is that some of it stems from New Labour's vast desire to win elections. They believe that government must seem to be strong to be re-elected. So anything that looks like a government defeat is an anomaly that should be rectified as soon as possible. If Straw really thinks he gave in on encryption (as far as I can tell they won) then a new bill will be somewhere on his list. That is probably OK - he's not Home Secretary any more. The real problem is that the government as a whole is obsessed with party unity. They hate anyone being off-message, they think it loses votes. So when the leadership is seen to be going in one direction, everyone else must be seen to be marching in step. There has been more than one occasion where Blair said something off the cuff and it suddenly became untouchable policy. Not because there is any kind of personality cult - Labour still hasn't sunk that far, in Britain that kind of perverted loyalty is more likely to be met with among Tories - but because they have been told by generations of journalists that divided parties lose elections. So if a censorship or encryption clampdown gets into a Blair speech instead of a Straw one, and if it is allowed to become policy, or even to seem to be policy, then they will waste time getting new legislation *even* *if* *they* *know* *it* *is* *useless* because they value party unity above passing good laws. They will do this for moral reasons, because they think that if they seem disunited or weak then the Tories will win, and pass worse laws. So they do the Tories work for them. As usual they are refighting the last war with the tactics of the one before - they are still obsessed with Thatcher, desiring both to defeat her and to be like her; but most of all to stop any Tory like her ever getting into power again. In hard times the government needs to keep its eye on the ball. The sort of nonsense Straw was talking about this morning won't help anybody. It is a waste of time. He's doing a bloody good job as Foreign Secretary, he should stick to it, and forget about censorship, encryption and i.d. cards; measure which wouldn't have stopped the attack, won't stop the next one, and will waste the time and money and effort of the police and the intelligence services whilst alienating people who would in other circumstances be this government's strong supporters. They will spend billions on measures that will annoy millions of law-abiding citizens, just to make life slightly tougher for a few travellers, immigrants, rough-sleepers, and moonlighters and sad men who like to look at dirty pictures, while doing *nothing* to worry organised crime or terrorists. The weirdest thing was Boris Johnson outflanking Jack Straw on the left. Johnson was saying on the same program, that the attackers have a "conservative" frame of mind (and less relevantly that such conservatism seemed to be inherent in Islam). He at first seemed to say (or was reported as saying by the journalists) that the attackers had a fear and loathing of women which perhaps disturbed their minds, made them behave in ways that to us seem irrational or insane. Later he retracted that but called them "conservatives" (he seemed to realise the irony as he spoke), people scared of social change, of uncertainty, of the apparent disorder and liberty of Europe and America. Straw - in this context - is a conservative. He has, I think, a sincere desire, deeply and strongly felt, for order in society. He is emotionally disturbed by kids hanging around on street corners, by aggressive speech, by ranting, by travellers (I cringe with embarrassment when I remember is absurd racist nonsense about "real gypsies". That man is in the same party as me?), by illegal immigrants, by petty smuggling, by public drunkenness, by litter, by disorder and complexity and ragged edges in general. He wants to clean up all the social clutter. It is the other side of the coin from the concern for "social exclusion". He wants everyone to be socially included, and those who can't, or won't, be included are scary. He thinks we would all be happier if everyone knew their place. He's not really a nationalist, but he is a statist. He thinks security and order are the product of the state, and that without the state our lives would be nasty, brutish, and short. So the authority of the state must be preserved. For him teenagers drinking cheap cider on street corners are at the thin end of a wedge that leads to the destruction of civilisation. This kind of conservative personality (whether Islamic-conservative or New-Labour-conservative) can all too easily slide into the sort of authoritarianism that objects to unlicensed people going about their unlicensed business, that wants to force everybody not just to know their place but to keep their place, that fears unregulated speech, that hates the idea of men with no master. That thinks that the only way to stop the kids hanging about on the street corners is to tell them where they should be and make sure they stay there. That thinks that the only way of preventing us from spreading hate over the Internet or from plotting to put bombs in the House of Commons car park is to listen to everything we say. That everything that is not explicitly commanded should be forbidden. That the giving and the taking of orders is good for the soul. In British politics that sort of authoritarian personality has typically found a home in the Conservative Party (some Tories love to spout about libertarianism and free trade, but the party as a whole has been firmly grounded in blue-rinsed, nationalist, royalist, protectionist, petty deferentialism for it's entire history). But I think we are seeing the result of authoritarian entryism into the Labour Party. Boris Johnson, I hate to admit, was right. If this is a war, we aren't going to win it by capitulating. Jack Straw made a surrender speech this morning. He called for appeasement. He almost certainly has no idea that that is what he was doing. I think Straw makes a decent Foreign Secretary. Intelligent, honest, hard-working, sincere, a lover of law and the Law, the last man to go and drop bombs on people for revenge and spite. But I thank God he isn't Home Secretary any more. I honestly doubt that he is emotionally capable of understanding why some of us cannot morally put up with i.d. cards and censorship. The liberty we love seems to him to be disorder, irrationality, delusion. </rant>

1 0

Re: Jack Straw on the 'Today' programme
by Ken Brown 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

Ian Miller wrote: > > Jack Straw has just been interviewed on the BBC4 Today programme. After > talking untypically good sense on his recent round of diplomacy, he > finished off with a rant against the press for daring to criticise his > efforts to regulate encryption, suggesting it was this that prevented > catching the WTC terrorists before they struck. He also seemed to be > assuming that, in the light of recent events, we would all agree with him > now. > > It sounded to me very like he was diverging from his script, and expressing > his own personal frustration, so we shouldn't assume it necessarily signals > anything about government policy. Albeit he is probably saying the same > sort of nonsense in cabinet. I heard it as well. It made me angry. Angry enough to waste 20 minutes ranting. It does seem as if Straw was taking it personally. My guess is that some of it stems from New Labour's vast desire to win elections. They believe that government must seem to be strong to be re-elected. So anything that looks like a government defeat is an anomaly that should be rectified as soon as possible. If Straw really thinks he gave in on encryption (as far as I can tell they won) then a new bill will be somewhere on his list. That is probably OK - he's not Home Secretary any more. The real problem is that the government as a whole is obsessed with party unity. They hate anyone being off-message, they think it loses votes. So when the leadership is seen to be going in one direction, everyone else must be seen to be marching in step. There has been more than one occasion where Blair said something off the cuff and it suddenly became untouchable policy. Not because there is any kind of personality cult - Labour still hasn't sunk that far, in Britain that kind of perverted loyalty is more likely to be met with among Tories - but because they have been told by generations of journalists that divided parties lose elections. So if a censorship or encryption clampdown gets into a Blair speech instead of a Straw one, and if it is allowed to become policy, or even to seem to be policy, then they will waste time getting new legislation *even* *if* *they* *know* *it* *is* *useless* because they value party unity above passing good laws. They will do this for moral reasons, because they think that if they seem disunited or weak then the Tories will win, and pass worse laws. So they do the Tories work for them. As usual they are refighting the last war with the tactics of the one before - they are still obsessed with Thatcher, desiring both to defeat her and to be like her; but most of all to stop any Tory like her ever getting into power again. In hard times the government needs to keep its eye on the ball. The sort of nonsense Straw was talking about this morning won't help anybody. It is a waste of time. He's doing a bloody good job as Foreign Secretary, he should stick to it, and forget about censorship, encryption and i.d. cards; measure which wouldn't have stopped the attack, won't stop the next one, and will waste the time and money and effort of the police and the intelligence services whilst alienating people who would in other circumstances be this government's strong supporters. They will spend billions on measures that will annoy millions of law-abiding citizens, just to make life slightly tougher for a few travellers, immigrants, rough-sleepers, and moonlighters and sad men who like to look at dirty pictures, while doing *nothing* to worry organised crime or terrorists. The weirdest thing was Boris Johnson outflanking Jack Straw on the left. Johnson was saying on the same program, that the attackers have a "conservative" frame of mind (and less relevantly that such conservatism seemed to be inherent in Islam). He at first seemed to say (or was reported as saying by the journalists) that the attackers had a fear and loathing of women which perhaps disturbed their minds, made them behave in ways that to us seem irrational or insane. Later he retracted that but called them "conservatives" (he seemed to realise the irony as he spoke), people scared of social change, of uncertainty, of the apparent disorder and liberty of Europe and America. Straw - in this context - is a conservative. He has, I think, a sincere desire, deeply and strongly felt, for order in society. He is emotionally disturbed by kids hanging around on street corners, by aggressive speech, by ranting, by travellers (I cringe with embarrassment when I remember is absurd racist nonsense about "real gypsies". That man is in the same party as me?), by illegal immigrants, by petty smuggling, by public drunkenness, by litter, by disorder and complexity and ragged edges in general. He wants to clean up all the social clutter. It is the other side of the coin from the concern for "social exclusion". He wants everyone to be socially included, and those who can't, or won't, be included are scary. He thinks we would all be happier if everyone knew their place. He's not really a nationalist, but he is a statist. He thinks security and order are the product of the state, and that without the state our lives would be nasty, brutish, and short. So the authority of the state must be preserved. For him teenagers drinking cheap cider on street corners are at the thin end of a wedge that leads to the destruction of civilisation. This kind of conservative personality (whether Islamic-conservative or New-Labour-conservative) can all too easily slide into the sort of authoritarianism that objects to unlicensed people going about their unlicensed business, that wants to force everybody not just to know their place but to keep their place, that fears unregulated speech, that hates the idea of men with no master. That thinks that the only way to stop the kids hanging about on the street corners is to tell them where they should be and make sure they stay there. That thinks that the only way of preventing us from spreading hate over the Internet or from plotting to put bombs in the House of Commons car park is to listen to everything we say. That everything that is not explicitly commanded should be forbidden. That the giving and the taking of orders is good for the soul. In British politics that sort of authoritarian personality has typically found a home in the Conservative Party (some Tories love to spout about libertarianism and free trade, but the party as a whole has been firmly grounded in blue-rinsed, nationalist, royalist, protectionist, petty deferentialism for it's entire history). But I think we are seeing the result of authoritarian entryism into the Labour Party. Boris Johnson, I hate to admit, was right. If this is a war, we aren't going to win it by capitulating. Jack Straw made a surrender speech this morning. He called for appeasement. He almost certainly has no idea that that is what he was doing. I think Straw makes a decent Foreign Secretary. Intelligent, honest, hard-working, sincere, a lover of law and the Law, the last man to go and drop bombs on people for revenge and spite. But I thank God he isn't Home Secretary any more. I honestly doubt that he is emotionally capable of understanding why some of us cannot morally put up with i.d. cards and censorship. The liberty we love seems to him to be disorder, irrationality, delusion. </rant>

1 0

Re: Jack Straw on the 'Today' programme
by Ken Brown 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

Ian Miller wrote: > > Jack Straw has just been interviewed on the BBC4 Today programme. After > talking untypically good sense on his recent round of diplomacy, he > finished off with a rant against the press for daring to criticise his > efforts to regulate encryption, suggesting it was this that prevented > catching the WTC terrorists before they struck. He also seemed to be > assuming that, in the light of recent events, we would all agree with him > now. > > It sounded to me very like he was diverging from his script, and expressing > his own personal frustration, so we shouldn't assume it necessarily signals > anything about government policy. Albeit he is probably saying the same > sort of nonsense in cabinet. I heard it as well. It made me angry. Angry enough to waste 20 minutes ranting. It does seem as if Straw was taking it personally. My guess is that some of it stems from New Labour's vast desire to win elections. They believe that government must seem to be strong to be re-elected. So anything that looks like a government defeat is an anomaly that should be rectified as soon as possible. If Straw really thinks he gave in on encryption (as far as I can tell they won) then a new bill will be somewhere on his list. That is probably OK - he's not Home Secretary any more. The real problem is that the government as a whole is obsessed with party unity. They hate anyone being off-message, they think it loses votes. So when the leadership is seen to be going in one direction, everyone else must be seen to be marching in step. There has been more than one occasion where Blair said something off the cuff and it suddenly became untouchable policy. Not because there is any kind of personality cult - Labour still hasn't sunk that far, in Britain that kind of perverted loyalty is more likely to be met with among Tories - but because they have been told by generations of journalists that divided parties lose elections. So if a censorship or encryption clampdown gets into a Blair speech instead of a Straw one, and if it is allowed to become policy, or even to seem to be policy, then they will waste time getting new legislation *even* *if* *they* *know* *it* *is* *useless* because they value party unity above passing good laws. They will do this for moral reasons, because they think that if they seem disunited or weak then the Tories will win, and pass worse laws. So they do the Tories work for them. As usual they are refighting the last war with the tactics of the one before - they are still obsessed with Thatcher, desiring both to defeat her and to be like her; but most of all to stop any Tory like her ever getting into power again. In hard times the government needs to keep its eye on the ball. The sort of nonsense Straw was talking about this morning won't help anybody. It is a waste of time. He's doing a bloody good job as Foreign Secretary, he should stick to it, and forget about censorship, encryption and i.d. cards; measure which wouldn't have stopped the attack, won't stop the next one, and will waste the time and money and effort of the police and the intelligence services whilst alienating people who would in other circumstances be this government's strong supporters. They will spend billions on measures that will annoy millions of law-abiding citizens, just to make life slightly tougher for a few travellers, immigrants, rough-sleepers, and moonlighters and sad men who like to look at dirty pictures, while doing *nothing* to worry organised crime or terrorists. The weirdest thing was Boris Johnson outflanking Jack Straw on the left. Johnson was saying on the same program, that the attackers have a "conservative" frame of mind (and less relevantly that such conservatism seemed to be inherent in Islam). He at first seemed to say (or was reported as saying by the journalists) that the attackers had a fear and loathing of women which perhaps disturbed their minds, made them behave in ways that to us seem irrational or insane. Later he retracted that but called them "conservatives" (he seemed to realise the irony as he spoke), people scared of social change, of uncertainty, of the apparent disorder and liberty of Europe and America. Straw - in this context - is a conservative. He has, I think, a sincere desire, deeply and strongly felt, for order in society. He is emotionally disturbed by kids hanging around on street corners, by aggressive speech, by ranting, by travellers (I cringe with embarrassment when I remember is absurd racist nonsense about "real gypsies". That man is in the same party as me?), by illegal immigrants, by petty smuggling, by public drunkenness, by litter, by disorder and complexity and ragged edges in general. He wants to clean up all the social clutter. It is the other side of the coin from the concern for "social exclusion". He wants everyone to be socially included, and those who can't, or won't, be included are scary. He thinks we would all be happier if everyone knew their place. He's not really a nationalist, but he is a statist. He thinks security and order are the product of the state, and that without the state our lives would be nasty, brutish, and short. So the authority of the state must be preserved. For him teenagers drinking cheap cider on street corners are at the thin end of a wedge that leads to the destruction of civilisation. This kind of conservative personality (whether Islamic-conservative or New-Labour-conservative) can all too easily slide into the sort of authoritarianism that objects to unlicensed people going about their unlicensed business, that wants to force everybody not just to know their place but to keep their place, that fears unregulated speech, that hates the idea of men with no master. That thinks that the only way to stop the kids hanging about on the street corners is to tell them where they should be and make sure they stay there. That thinks that the only way of preventing us from spreading hate over the Internet or from plotting to put bombs in the House of Commons car park is to listen to everything we say. That everything that is not explicitly commanded should be forbidden. That the giving and the taking of orders is good for the soul. In British politics that sort of authoritarian personality has typically found a home in the Conservative Party (some Tories love to spout about libertarianism and free trade, but the party as a whole has been firmly grounded in blue-rinsed, nationalist, royalist, protectionist, petty deferentialism for it's entire history). But I think we are seeing the result of authoritarian entryism into the Labour Party. Boris Johnson, I hate to admit, was right. If this is a war, we aren't going to win it by capitulating. Jack Straw made a surrender speech this morning. He called for appeasement. He almost certainly has no idea that that is what he was doing. I think Straw makes a decent Foreign Secretary. Intelligent, honest, hard-working, sincere, a lover of law and the Law, the last man to go and drop bombs on people for revenge and spite. But I thank God he isn't Home Secretary any more. I honestly doubt that he is emotionally capable of understanding why some of us cannot morally put up with i.d. cards and censorship. The liberty we love seems to him to be disorder, irrationality, delusion. </rant>

1 0

Re: Jack Straw on the 'Today' programme
by Ken Brown 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

Ian Miller wrote: > > Jack Straw has just been interviewed on the BBC4 Today programme. After > talking untypically good sense on his recent round of diplomacy, he > finished off with a rant against the press for daring to criticise his > efforts to regulate encryption, suggesting it was this that prevented > catching the WTC terrorists before they struck. He also seemed to be > assuming that, in the light of recent events, we would all agree with him > now. > > It sounded to me very like he was diverging from his script, and expressing > his own personal frustration, so we shouldn't assume it necessarily signals > anything about government policy. Albeit he is probably saying the same > sort of nonsense in cabinet. I heard it as well. It made me angry. Angry enough to waste 20 minutes ranting. It does seem as if Straw was taking it personally. My guess is that some of it stems from New Labour's vast desire to win elections. They believe that government must seem to be strong to be re-elected. So anything that looks like a government defeat is an anomaly that should be rectified as soon as possible. If Straw really thinks he gave in on encryption (as far as I can tell they won) then a new bill will be somewhere on his list. That is probably OK - he's not Home Secretary any more. The real problem is that the government as a whole is obsessed with party unity. They hate anyone being off-message, they think it loses votes. So when the leadership is seen to be going in one direction, everyone else must be seen to be marching in step. There has been more than one occasion where Blair said something off the cuff and it suddenly became untouchable policy. Not because there is any kind of personality cult - Labour still hasn't sunk that far, in Britain that kind of perverted loyalty is more likely to be met with among Tories - but because they have been told by generations of journalists that divided parties lose elections. So if a censorship or encryption clampdown gets into a Blair speech instead of a Straw one, and if it is allowed to become policy, or even to seem to be policy, then they will waste time getting new legislation *even* *if* *they* *know* *it* *is* *useless* because they value party unity above passing good laws. They will do this for moral reasons, because they think that if they seem disunited or weak then the Tories will win, and pass worse laws. So they do the Tories work for them. As usual they are refighting the last war with the tactics of the one before - they are still obsessed with Thatcher, desiring both to defeat her and to be like her; but most of all to stop any Tory like her ever getting into power again. In hard times the government needs to keep its eye on the ball. The sort of nonsense Straw was talking about this morning won't help anybody. It is a waste of time. He's doing a bloody good job as Foreign Secretary, he should stick to it, and forget about censorship, encryption and i.d. cards; measure which wouldn't have stopped the attack, won't stop the next one, and will waste the time and money and effort of the police and the intelligence services whilst alienating people who would in other circumstances be this government's strong supporters. They will spend billions on measures that will annoy millions of law-abiding citizens, just to make life slightly tougher for a few travellers, immigrants, rough-sleepers, and moonlighters and sad men who like to look at dirty pictures, while doing *nothing* to worry organised crime or terrorists. The weirdest thing was Boris Johnson outflanking Jack Straw on the left. Johnson was saying on the same program, that the attackers have a "conservative" frame of mind (and less relevantly that such conservatism seemed to be inherent in Islam). He at first seemed to say (or was reported as saying by the journalists) that the attackers had a fear and loathing of women which perhaps disturbed their minds, made them behave in ways that to us seem irrational or insane. Later he retracted that but called them "conservatives" (he seemed to realise the irony as he spoke), people scared of social change, of uncertainty, of the apparent disorder and liberty of Europe and America. Straw - in this context - is a conservative. He has, I think, a sincere desire, deeply and strongly felt, for order in society. He is emotionally disturbed by kids hanging around on street corners, by aggressive speech, by ranting, by travellers (I cringe with embarrassment when I remember is absurd racist nonsense about "real gypsies". That man is in the same party as me?), by illegal immigrants, by petty smuggling, by public drunkenness, by litter, by disorder and complexity and ragged edges in general. He wants to clean up all the social clutter. It is the other side of the coin from the concern for "social exclusion". He wants everyone to be socially included, and those who can't, or won't, be included are scary. He thinks we would all be happier if everyone knew their place. He's not really a nationalist, but he is a statist. He thinks security and order are the product of the state, and that without the state our lives would be nasty, brutish, and short. So the authority of the state must be preserved. For him teenagers drinking cheap cider on street corners are at the thin end of a wedge that leads to the destruction of civilisation. This kind of conservative personality (whether Islamic-conservative or New-Labour-conservative) can all too easily slide into the sort of authoritarianism that objects to unlicensed people going about their unlicensed business, that wants to force everybody not just to know their place but to keep their place, that fears unregulated speech, that hates the idea of men with no master. That thinks that the only way to stop the kids hanging about on the street corners is to tell them where they should be and make sure they stay there. That thinks that the only way of preventing us from spreading hate over the Internet or from plotting to put bombs in the House of Commons car park is to listen to everything we say. That everything that is not explicitly commanded should be forbidden. That the giving and the taking of orders is good for the soul. In British politics that sort of authoritarian personality has typically found a home in the Conservative Party (some Tories love to spout about libertarianism and free trade, but the party as a whole has been firmly grounded in blue-rinsed, nationalist, royalist, protectionist, petty deferentialism for it's entire history). But I think we are seeing the result of authoritarian entryism into the Labour Party. Boris Johnson, I hate to admit, was right. If this is a war, we aren't going to win it by capitulating. Jack Straw made a surrender speech this morning. He called for appeasement. He almost certainly has no idea that that is what he was doing. I think Straw makes a decent Foreign Secretary. Intelligent, honest, hard-working, sincere, a lover of law and the Law, the last man to go and drop bombs on people for revenge and spite. But I thank God he isn't Home Secretary any more. I honestly doubt that he is emotionally capable of understanding why some of us cannot morally put up with i.d. cards and censorship. The liberty we love seems to him to be disorder, irrationality, delusion. </rant>

1 0

Re: Jack Straw on the 'Today' programme
by Ken Brown 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

Ian Miller wrote: > > Jack Straw has just been interviewed on the BBC4 Today programme. After > talking untypically good sense on his recent round of diplomacy, he > finished off with a rant against the press for daring to criticise his > efforts to regulate encryption, suggesting it was this that prevented > catching the WTC terrorists before they struck. He also seemed to be > assuming that, in the light of recent events, we would all agree with him > now. > > It sounded to me very like he was diverging from his script, and expressing > his own personal frustration, so we shouldn't assume it necessarily signals > anything about government policy. Albeit he is probably saying the same > sort of nonsense in cabinet. I heard it as well. It made me angry. Angry enough to waste 20 minutes ranting. It does seem as if Straw was taking it personally. My guess is that some of it stems from New Labour's vast desire to win elections. They believe that government must seem to be strong to be re-elected. So anything that looks like a government defeat is an anomaly that should be rectified as soon as possible. If Straw really thinks he gave in on encryption (as far as I can tell they won) then a new bill will be somewhere on his list. That is probably OK - he's not Home Secretary any more. The real problem is that the government as a whole is obsessed with party unity. They hate anyone being off-message, they think it loses votes. So when the leadership is seen to be going in one direction, everyone else must be seen to be marching in step. There has been more than one occasion where Blair said something off the cuff and it suddenly became untouchable policy. Not because there is any kind of personality cult - Labour still hasn't sunk that far, in Britain that kind of perverted loyalty is more likely to be met with among Tories - but because they have been told by generations of journalists that divided parties lose elections. So if a censorship or encryption clampdown gets into a Blair speech instead of a Straw one, and if it is allowed to become policy, or even to seem to be policy, then they will waste time getting new legislation *even* *if* *they* *know* *it* *is* *useless* because they value party unity above passing good laws. They will do this for moral reasons, because they think that if they seem disunited or weak then the Tories will win, and pass worse laws. So they do the Tories work for them. As usual they are refighting the last war with the tactics of the one before - they are still obsessed with Thatcher, desiring both to defeat her and to be like her; but most of all to stop any Tory like her ever getting into power again. In hard times the government needs to keep its eye on the ball. The sort of nonsense Straw was talking about this morning won't help anybody. It is a waste of time. He's doing a bloody good job as Foreign Secretary, he should stick to it, and forget about censorship, encryption and i.d. cards; measure which wouldn't have stopped the attack, won't stop the next one, and will waste the time and money and effort of the police and the intelligence services whilst alienating people who would in other circumstances be this government's strong supporters. They will spend billions on measures that will annoy millions of law-abiding citizens, just to make life slightly tougher for a few travellers, immigrants, rough-sleepers, and moonlighters and sad men who like to look at dirty pictures, while doing *nothing* to worry organised crime or terrorists. The weirdest thing was Boris Johnson outflanking Jack Straw on the left. Johnson was saying on the same program, that the attackers have a "conservative" frame of mind (and less relevantly that such conservatism seemed to be inherent in Islam). He at first seemed to say (or was reported as saying by the journalists) that the attackers had a fear and loathing of women which perhaps disturbed their minds, made them behave in ways that to us seem irrational or insane. Later he retracted that but called them "conservatives" (he seemed to realise the irony as he spoke), people scared of social change, of uncertainty, of the apparent disorder and liberty of Europe and America. Straw - in this context - is a conservative. He has, I think, a sincere desire, deeply and strongly felt, for order in society. He is emotionally disturbed by kids hanging around on street corners, by aggressive speech, by ranting, by travellers (I cringe with embarrassment when I remember is absurd racist nonsense about "real gypsies". That man is in the same party as me?), by illegal immigrants, by petty smuggling, by public drunkenness, by litter, by disorder and complexity and ragged edges in general. He wants to clean up all the social clutter. It is the other side of the coin from the concern for "social exclusion". He wants everyone to be socially included, and those who can't, or won't, be included are scary. He thinks we would all be happier if everyone knew their place. He's not really a nationalist, but he is a statist. He thinks security and order are the product of the state, and that without the state our lives would be nasty, brutish, and short. So the authority of the state must be preserved. For him teenagers drinking cheap cider on street corners are at the thin end of a wedge that leads to the destruction of civilisation. This kind of conservative personality (whether Islamic-conservative or New-Labour-conservative) can all too easily slide into the sort of authoritarianism that objects to unlicensed people going about their unlicensed business, that wants to force everybody not just to know their place but to keep their place, that fears unregulated speech, that hates the idea of men with no master. That thinks that the only way to stop the kids hanging about on the street corners is to tell them where they should be and make sure they stay there. That thinks that the only way of preventing us from spreading hate over the Internet or from plotting to put bombs in the House of Commons car park is to listen to everything we say. That everything that is not explicitly commanded should be forbidden. That the giving and the taking of orders is good for the soul. In British politics that sort of authoritarian personality has typically found a home in the Conservative Party (some Tories love to spout about libertarianism and free trade, but the party as a whole has been firmly grounded in blue-rinsed, nationalist, royalist, protectionist, petty deferentialism for it's entire history). But I think we are seeing the result of authoritarian entryism into the Labour Party. Boris Johnson, I hate to admit, was right. If this is a war, we aren't going to win it by capitulating. Jack Straw made a surrender speech this morning. He called for appeasement. He almost certainly has no idea that that is what he was doing. I think Straw makes a decent Foreign Secretary. Intelligent, honest, hard-working, sincere, a lover of law and the Law, the last man to go and drop bombs on people for revenge and spite. But I thank God he isn't Home Secretary any more. I honestly doubt that he is emotionally capable of understanding why some of us cannot morally put up with i.d. cards and censorship. The liberty we love seems to him to be disorder, irrationality, delusion. </rant>

1 0

Re: Jack Straw on the 'Today' programme
by Ken Brown 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

Ian Miller wrote: > > Jack Straw has just been interviewed on the BBC4 Today programme. After > talking untypically good sense on his recent round of diplomacy, he > finished off with a rant against the press for daring to criticise his > efforts to regulate encryption, suggesting it was this that prevented > catching the WTC terrorists before they struck. He also seemed to be > assuming that, in the light of recent events, we would all agree with him > now. > > It sounded to me very like he was diverging from his script, and expressing > his own personal frustration, so we shouldn't assume it necessarily signals > anything about government policy. Albeit he is probably saying the same > sort of nonsense in cabinet. I heard it as well. It made me angry. Angry enough to waste 20 minutes ranting. It does seem as if Straw was taking it personally. My guess is that some of it stems from New Labour's vast desire to win elections. They believe that government must seem to be strong to be re-elected. So anything that looks like a government defeat is an anomaly that should be rectified as soon as possible. If Straw really thinks he gave in on encryption (as far as I can tell they won) then a new bill will be somewhere on his list. That is probably OK - he's not Home Secretary any more. The real problem is that the government as a whole is obsessed with party unity. They hate anyone being off-message, they think it loses votes. So when the leadership is seen to be going in one direction, everyone else must be seen to be marching in step. There has been more than one occasion where Blair said something off the cuff and it suddenly became untouchable policy. Not because there is any kind of personality cult - Labour still hasn't sunk that far, in Britain that kind of perverted loyalty is more likely to be met with among Tories - but because they have been told by generations of journalists that divided parties lose elections. So if a censorship or encryption clampdown gets into a Blair speech instead of a Straw one, and if it is allowed to become policy, or even to seem to be policy, then they will waste time getting new legislation *even* *if* *they* *know* *it* *is* *useless* because they value party unity above passing good laws. They will do this for moral reasons, because they think that if they seem disunited or weak then the Tories will win, and pass worse laws. So they do the Tories work for them. As usual they are refighting the last war with the tactics of the one before - they are still obsessed with Thatcher, desiring both to defeat her and to be like her; but most of all to stop any Tory like her ever getting into power again. In hard times the government needs to keep its eye on the ball. The sort of nonsense Straw was talking about this morning won't help anybody. It is a waste of time. He's doing a bloody good job as Foreign Secretary, he should stick to it, and forget about censorship, encryption and i.d. cards; measure which wouldn't have stopped the attack, won't stop the next one, and will waste the time and money and effort of the police and the intelligence services whilst alienating people who would in other circumstances be this government's strong supporters. They will spend billions on measures that will annoy millions of law-abiding citizens, just to make life slightly tougher for a few travellers, immigrants, rough-sleepers, and moonlighters and sad men who like to look at dirty pictures, while doing *nothing* to worry organised crime or terrorists. The weirdest thing was Boris Johnson outflanking Jack Straw on the left. Johnson was saying on the same program, that the attackers have a "conservative" frame of mind (and less relevantly that such conservatism seemed to be inherent in Islam). He at first seemed to say (or was reported as saying by the journalists) that the attackers had a fear and loathing of women which perhaps disturbed their minds, made them behave in ways that to us seem irrational or insane. Later he retracted that but called them "conservatives" (he seemed to realise the irony as he spoke), people scared of social change, of uncertainty, of the apparent disorder and liberty of Europe and America. Straw - in this context - is a conservative. He has, I think, a sincere desire, deeply and strongly felt, for order in society. He is emotionally disturbed by kids hanging around on street corners, by aggressive speech, by ranting, by travellers (I cringe with embarrassment when I remember is absurd racist nonsense about "real gypsies". That man is in the same party as me?), by illegal immigrants, by petty smuggling, by public drunkenness, by litter, by disorder and complexity and ragged edges in general. He wants to clean up all the social clutter. It is the other side of the coin from the concern for "social exclusion". He wants everyone to be socially included, and those who can't, or won't, be included are scary. He thinks we would all be happier if everyone knew their place. He's not really a nationalist, but he is a statist. He thinks security and order are the product of the state, and that without the state our lives would be nasty, brutish, and short. So the authority of the state must be preserved. For him teenagers drinking cheap cider on street corners are at the thin end of a wedge that leads to the destruction of civilisation. This kind of conservative personality (whether Islamic-conservative or New-Labour-conservative) can all too easily slide into the sort of authoritarianism that objects to unlicensed people going about their unlicensed business, that wants to force everybody not just to know their place but to keep their place, that fears unregulated speech, that hates the idea of men with no master. That thinks that the only way to stop the kids hanging about on the street corners is to tell them where they should be and make sure they stay there. That thinks that the only way of preventing us from spreading hate over the Internet or from plotting to put bombs in the House of Commons car park is to listen to everything we say. That everything that is not explicitly commanded should be forbidden. That the giving and the taking of orders is good for the soul. In British politics that sort of authoritarian personality has typically found a home in the Conservative Party (some Tories love to spout about libertarianism and free trade, but the party as a whole has been firmly grounded in blue-rinsed, nationalist, royalist, protectionist, petty deferentialism for it's entire history). But I think we are seeing the result of authoritarian entryism into the Labour Party. Boris Johnson, I hate to admit, was right. If this is a war, we aren't going to win it by capitulating. Jack Straw made a surrender speech this morning. He called for appeasement. He almost certainly has no idea that that is what he was doing. I think Straw makes a decent Foreign Secretary. Intelligent, honest, hard-working, sincere, a lover of law and the Law, the last man to go and drop bombs on people for revenge and spite. But I thank God he isn't Home Secretary any more. I honestly doubt that he is emotionally capable of understanding why some of us cannot morally put up with i.d. cards and censorship. The liberty we love seems to him to be disorder, irrationality, delusion. </rant>

1 0

Re: Jack Straw on the 'Today' programme
by Ken Brown 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

Ian Miller wrote: > > Jack Straw has just been interviewed on the BBC4 Today programme. After > talking untypically good sense on his recent round of diplomacy, he > finished off with a rant against the press for daring to criticise his > efforts to regulate encryption, suggesting it was this that prevented > catching the WTC terrorists before they struck. He also seemed to be > assuming that, in the light of recent events, we would all agree with him > now. > > It sounded to me very like he was diverging from his script, and expressing > his own personal frustration, so we shouldn't assume it necessarily signals > anything about government policy. Albeit he is probably saying the same > sort of nonsense in cabinet. I heard it as well. It made me angry. Angry enough to waste 20 minutes ranting. It does seem as if Straw was taking it personally. My guess is that some of it stems from New Labour's vast desire to win elections. They believe that government must seem to be strong to be re-elected. So anything that looks like a government defeat is an anomaly that should be rectified as soon as possible. If Straw really thinks he gave in on encryption (as far as I can tell they won) then a new bill will be somewhere on his list. That is probably OK - he's not Home Secretary any more. The real problem is that the government as a whole is obsessed with party unity. They hate anyone being off-message, they think it loses votes. So when the leadership is seen to be going in one direction, everyone else must be seen to be marching in step. There has been more than one occasion where Blair said something off the cuff and it suddenly became untouchable policy. Not because there is any kind of personality cult - Labour still hasn't sunk that far, in Britain that kind of perverted loyalty is more likely to be met with among Tories - but because they have been told by generations of journalists that divided parties lose elections. So if a censorship or encryption clampdown gets into a Blair speech instead of a Straw one, and if it is allowed to become policy, or even to seem to be policy, then they will waste time getting new legislation *even* *if* *they* *know* *it* *is* *useless* because they value party unity above passing good laws. They will do this for moral reasons, because they think that if they seem disunited or weak then the Tories will win, and pass worse laws. So they do the Tories work for them. As usual they are refighting the last war with the tactics of the one before - they are still obsessed with Thatcher, desiring both to defeat her and to be like her; but most of all to stop any Tory like her ever getting into power again. In hard times the government needs to keep its eye on the ball. The sort of nonsense Straw was talking about this morning won't help anybody. It is a waste of time. He's doing a bloody good job as Foreign Secretary, he should stick to it, and forget about censorship, encryption and i.d. cards; measure which wouldn't have stopped the attack, won't stop the next one, and will waste the time and money and effort of the police and the intelligence services whilst alienating people who would in other circumstances be this government's strong supporters. They will spend billions on measures that will annoy millions of law-abiding citizens, just to make life slightly tougher for a few travellers, immigrants, rough-sleepers, and moonlighters and sad men who like to look at dirty pictures, while doing *nothing* to worry organised crime or terrorists. The weirdest thing was Boris Johnson outflanking Jack Straw on the left. Johnson was saying on the same program, that the attackers have a "conservative" frame of mind (and less relevantly that such conservatism seemed to be inherent in Islam). He at first seemed to say (or was reported as saying by the journalists) that the attackers had a fear and loathing of women which perhaps disturbed their minds, made them behave in ways that to us seem irrational or insane. Later he retracted that but called them "conservatives" (he seemed to realise the irony as he spoke), people scared of social change, of uncertainty, of the apparent disorder and liberty of Europe and America. Straw - in this context - is a conservative. He has, I think, a sincere desire, deeply and strongly felt, for order in society. He is emotionally disturbed by kids hanging around on street corners, by aggressive speech, by ranting, by travellers (I cringe with embarrassment when I remember is absurd racist nonsense about "real gypsies". That man is in the same party as me?), by illegal immigrants, by petty smuggling, by public drunkenness, by litter, by disorder and complexity and ragged edges in general. He wants to clean up all the social clutter. It is the other side of the coin from the concern for "social exclusion". He wants everyone to be socially included, and those who can't, or won't, be included are scary. He thinks we would all be happier if everyone knew their place. He's not really a nationalist, but he is a statist. He thinks security and order are the product of the state, and that without the state our lives would be nasty, brutish, and short. So the authority of the state must be preserved. For him teenagers drinking cheap cider on street corners are at the thin end of a wedge that leads to the destruction of civilisation. This kind of conservative personality (whether Islamic-conservative or New-Labour-conservative) can all too easily slide into the sort of authoritarianism that objects to unlicensed people going about their unlicensed business, that wants to force everybody not just to know their place but to keep their place, that fears unregulated speech, that hates the idea of men with no master. That thinks that the only way to stop the kids hanging about on the street corners is to tell them where they should be and make sure they stay there. That thinks that the only way of preventing us from spreading hate over the Internet or from plotting to put bombs in the House of Commons car park is to listen to everything we say. That everything that is not explicitly commanded should be forbidden. That the giving and the taking of orders is good for the soul. In British politics that sort of authoritarian personality has typically found a home in the Conservative Party (some Tories love to spout about libertarianism and free trade, but the party as a whole has been firmly grounded in blue-rinsed, nationalist, royalist, protectionist, petty deferentialism for it's entire history). But I think we are seeing the result of authoritarian entryism into the Labour Party. Boris Johnson, I hate to admit, was right. If this is a war, we aren't going to win it by capitulating. Jack Straw made a surrender speech this morning. He called for appeasement. He almost certainly has no idea that that is what he was doing. I think Straw makes a decent Foreign Secretary. Intelligent, honest, hard-working, sincere, a lover of law and the Law, the last man to go and drop bombs on people for revenge and spite. But I thank God he isn't Home Secretary any more. I honestly doubt that he is emotionally capable of understanding why some of us cannot morally put up with i.d. cards and censorship. The liberty we love seems to him to be disorder, irrationality, delusion. </rant>

1 0

Re: Bitcoin P2P e-cash paper
by hal＠finney.org 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

Bitcoin seems to be a very promising idea. I like the idea of basing security on the assumption that the CPU power of honest participants outweighs that of the attacker. It is a very modern notion that exploits the power of the long tail. When Wikipedia started I never thought it would work, but it has proven to be a great success for some of the same reasons. I also do think that there is potential value in a form of unforgeable token whose production rate is predictable and can't be influenced by corrupt parties. This would be more analogous to gold than to fiat currencies. Nick Szabo wrote many years ago about what he called "bit gold"[1] and this could be an implementation of that concept. There have also been proposals for building light-weight anonymous payment schemes on top of heavy-weight non-anonymous systems, so Bitcoin could be leveraged to allow for anonymity even beyond the mechanisms discussed in the paper. Unfortunately I am having trouble fully understanding the system. The paper describes key concepts and some data structures, but does not clearly specify the various rules and verifications that the participants in the system would have to follow. In particular I don't understand exactly what verifications P2P nodes perform when they receive new blocks from other nodes, and how they handle transactions that have been broadcast to them. For example, it is mentioned that if a broadcast transaction does not reach all nodes, it is OK, as it will get into the block chain before long. How does this happen - what if the node that creates the "next" block (the first node to find the hashcash collision) did not hear about the transaction, and then a few more blocks get added also by nodes that did not hear about that transaction? Do all the nodes that did hear it keep that transaction around, hoping to incorporate it into a block once they get lucky enough to be the one which finds the next collision? Or for example, what if a node is keeping two or more chains around as it waits to see which grows fastest, and a block comes in for chain A which would include a double-spend of a coin that is in chain B? Is that checked for or not? (This might happen if someone double-spent and two different sets of nodes heard about the two different transactions with the same coin.) This kind of data management, and the rules for handling all the packets that are flowing around is largely missing from the paper. I also don't understand exactly how double-spending, or cancelling transactions, is accomplished by a superior attacker who is able to muster more computing power than all the honest participants. I see that he can create new blocks and add them to create the longest chain, but how can he erase or add old transactions in the chain? As the attacker sends out his new blocks, aren't there consistency checks which honest nodes can perform, to make sure that nothing got erased? More explanation of this attack would be helpful, in order to judge the gains to an attacker from this, versus simply using his computing power to mint new coins honestly. As far as the spending transactions, what checks does the recipient of a coin have to perform? Does she need to go back through the coin's entire history of transfers, and make sure that every transaction on the list is indeed linked into the "timestamp" block chain? Or can she just do the latest one? Do the timestamp nodes check transactions, making sure that the previous transaction on a coin is in the chain, thereby enforcing the rule that all transactions in the chain represent valid coins? Sorry about all the questions, but as I said this does seem to be a very promising and original idea, and I am looking forward to seeing how the concept is further developed. It would be helpful to see a more process oriented description of the idea, with concrete details of the data structures for the various objects (coins, blocks, transactions), the data which is included in messages, and algorithmic descriptions of the procedures for handling the various events which would occur in this system. You mentioned that you are working on an implementation, but I think a more formal, text description of the system would be a helpful next step. Hal Finney [1] http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)metzdowd.com

1 0

[Dewayne-Net] Apple tries to patent 'tamper-resistant software'
by Dewayne Hendricks 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

Apple tries to patent 'tamper-resistant software' By Ina Fried <http://news.com.com/Apple+tries+to+patent+tamper-resistant+software/ 2100-1045_3-5942107.html> Story last modified Wed Nov 09 11:16:00 PST 2005 Apple Computer, which is in the process of switching to computers based on the omnipresent Intel processor, has filed a patent application describing a method for securely running Mac OS X on specific hardware. The Mac maker has applied for a patent to cover a "system and method for creating tamper-resistant code." Apple describes ways of ensuring that code can be limited to specific hardware, even in a world in which operating systems can be run simultaneously, in so-called virtual machines. The patent application was made in April of 2004, but only made public last Thursday. In its application, Apple describes a means of securing code using either a specific hardware address or read-only memory (ROM) serial number. Apple also talks about securing the code while interchanging information among multiple operating systems. Mac OS X, Windows and Linux are called out specifically in the filing. "This invention relates generally to the field of computer data processing and more particularly to techniques for creating tamper- resistant software," Apple says in its patent filing. Specifically, Apple refers to the technique of "code obfuscation," in which software makers employ techniques that make it harder for those using debuggers or emulators to figure out how a particular block of code is working. Apple's patent application comes as the company prepares to offer its Mac OS X operating system for Intel-based chips, with the first machines slated to go on sale next year. Historically, the company has had to worry less about the Mac running on non-Apple hardware because it has used different chips and other components from those that power Windows PCs. With its move to Intel chips, though, the innards of the Mac will become more similar to those of its Windows-based counterparts. The company said it is not planning on supporting Windows or other operating systems on the Intel-based Macs it sells but has also said it doesn't plan on taking steps to prevent Mac owners from running other operating systems. "We won't do anything to preclude that," Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller told CNET News.com in June. However, Schiller also said Apple has no plans to allow its operating system to run on non-Apple hardware. "We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac," he said. An Apple representative declined to comment Wednesday on the patent filing. Clearly, though, Apple is gearing up the intellectual property push around the Intel move. The company has reportedly been beefing up the technology that constrains the Intel versions of Mac OS X to run only on authorized machines, to this point a set of test Macs given to developers. The company has also applied for a trademark on Rosetta, its technology for running existing Mac programs on the Intel chips. Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com> ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen(a)leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]

1 0

[IP] Apple tries to patent 'tamper-resistant software'
by David Farber 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

Begin forwarded message:

1 0