- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: No More
by brazie＠ipa.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:53 PM 11/8/96 -0500, YoungSik Jeong wrote: >I want take off mail list > > >so do i, i tried but i keep getting all this damn mail

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Re: [Announcement] Cypherpunks Shooting Club
by camcc＠abraxis.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:54 PM 11/8/96 -0800, you wrote: :By popular request, I am following up on the three year old idea of the :Cypherpunks Shooting Club. : :Bring your own firearm or use one of the ones provided. :-- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred How timely, especially after (or during) Flame Wars--96! How are targets to be determined, by lot? Cordially, Alec PGP Fingerprint: pub 1024/41207EE5 1996/04/08 Alec McCrackin <camcc(a)abraxis.com> Key fingerprint = 09 13 E1 CB B3 0C 88 D9 D7 D4 10 F0 06 7D DF 31

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Re: "Nightmare on Crypto Street--the Return of Sun Devil"
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:11 AM 11/8/1996, Timothy C. May wrote: > As I said in my "Nightmare on Crypto Street" piece, it seems that Peter > counters every one of our counterarguments with some variant of "won't > matter--they'll have a dozen agents and 20 MIT graduates looking for > evidence." Or, "won't matter, the Bill of Rights will be suspended for the > duration of the Emergency." Well, it's hard to argue with such points. I've created some confusion with my posts which have been less than organized. That's a consequence of making it up as you go along. The dialogue has helped me to refine my thinking. (Thanks, guys!) This is the rough structure of my thinking: 1. Hypothetically, let's say "Nightmare on Crypto Street" happens. 1.1 We can't guarantee this will not happen, therefore it must be addressed. 1.2 This is an unlikely scenario. 2. Thus, there would be broad public support for GAK. 2.1 By broad, I mean even many former cypherpunks would recant. 3. Broad public support makes suppression of strong cryptography feasible. 3.1 And, without dramatic short term erosion of the Constitution. 3.2 Or, a short term break down in the rule of law. 3.3 The number of violators would be small, so resources would be available to do hard things. 3.3.1 Such as having 20 MIT grads go over your house with a fine toothed comb. 4. What are the motivations of the GAKers? 4.1 They appear to want to suppress strong cryptography *before* we there is *any* evidence of a problem. 4.2 That is unnecessary, because if 1. occurs, it may be addressed. 4.3 It is as easier to impose GAK after 1. occurs, rather than before. 4.2 Could it be that they want to prevent the public from discovering the benefits of cryptoanarchy? 4.3 Why have the GAKers failed to address the risk of a police state? We've seen many police states historically. They are an obvious and serious risk. The GAKers have been oddly reticent regarding this point. In the future I will try to make it more clear which area I am addressing. I'm sure many cypherpunks feel we are just rehashing issues that were settled long ago. I think it never hurts to go over our assumptions and help new people to fully understand cypherpunk ideas. It never hurts to anticipate future moves by the GAKers, either, even ones they haven't thought of yet. These discussions generate ideas of how to effect the changes we want to see. For instance, if we develop low tech inexpensive and easy ways to support cryptoanarchy, it makes it much harder to suppress. The difficulty in suppression may prevent ill-advised attempts to do so. Also, the more we can erode the barriers between code and language, the stronger the case is that laws governing code are violations of the First Amendment. What if you had a compiler that accepted English language instructions for how to build a crypto system? "Take a random number 64 bits long. Then find a prime which is a little larger. Then...." The language itself should remain protected by the First Amendment even if somebody else has a compiler which can turn it into software. Another conclusion we can draw is that cryptoanarchy is more of a political issue than many of us would like. That means we might put more effort into public opinion than just straight coding. (Tim may claim otherwise, but I think he agrees with this in practice.) It may also be that the "bad boy" image of the Cypherpunks is counterproductive to our goals. Many people do not know how strongly I feel that GAK is a terribly risky policy, as I have been playing Devil's Advocate for the last couple of days. Given almost every situation that is likely to arise, I am totally opposed to GAK, and not just mandatory GAK, any GAK whatsoever. For instance, were I given the choice between intellectual property laws (off which I have made my living), and GAK, I would seriously consider discarding the intellectual property laws. It is that bad of an idea. And, like just about everybody else, the idea that certain forms of arithmetic could be illegal is deeply offensive in its own right. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Re: Black Unicorn exposed?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:45 AM 11/9/96 -0800, Peter Hendrickson wrote: >At 11:00 AM 11/9/1996, Robert Hettinga wrote: >> S. L. vonBernhardt, <mailto:unicorn@schloss.li>,... > >We are hardly operating in a hostile environment. Yet, somebody >who has apparently gone to some effort to have an anonymous >identity has been exposed. The implications of this are worth >considering. It seems obvious that this exposure was entirely intentional by him. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Pseudo-law on the list and libel (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 10:10:19 -0800 > From: "Timothy C. May" <tcmay(a)got.net> > > So, if a bookstore ejects a drunken lout who is disturbing the other > patrons, is the bookstore suddenly reclassfied as a book publisher? By your > logic, you seem to think so. Not at all. The drunk is not being ejected on the content of their expression (beliefs). Vulis posed no physical or economic danger to anyone, the operator simply could take no more of his POV. This is distinctly different than the example you are trying to equate. In short, another straw man. > So, if I have a party at my house and limit who I invite, or eject someone > who is misbehaving (insulting my other guests, barfing on the floor, > smoking when I tell him not to, whatever), you are saying that I "open > myself up for libel suits" by other guests who don't like the things they > hear from others at my party? Only if you advertise the party through a public forum as open to anyone and you are the one supplying the booze (as advertised in the ad). The operator of this list has NEVER implicity or explicity expressed any form of policy concerning who may subscribe to cpunks. > So, anyone who exercises ownership rights to his property suddenly becomes > legally responsible for the alleged misdeeds of anyone visiting his house? My subscription to this mailing list does not imply any ownership toward its operator. He owns the software and hardware, he does not own my thoughts or the fact that I use this forum to distribute them. The fact he pays the bills does not give him any right to edit or otherwise control my submissions without an explicit warning to me prior to his acceptance of my submission. > Could you cite some cases supporting your point of view? Try CompuServe and Prodigy. The logic that was used in both those cases is 1-to-1 applicable to this. For somebody who supposedly supports individual initiative, liberty, and anarchy you sure rely on precedence a lot. The whole point to crypto, Internet, and technology in general is to break the status quo not to promote it. > this outcome, strongly. However, it is far from establishing that a bar > which enforces certain rules ("no shirt, no service") and which has an > entire class of employees hired to _eject_ patrons has suddenly become > liable for slanderous comments made by customers. And so on.) Look at the recent 'Hooters' case involving women waitpersons. For a business establishment to impose 'no shirt, no shoes, no service" they MUST post such rules in a public place. This was NOT done EVER on cpunks. Again, you are trying to equate two distinctly different cases as equivalent, another straw man. Jim Choate

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Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:30 AM 11/9/1996, Adam Back wrote: >Peter Hendrickson <ph(a)netcom.com> writes: >> Where will you keep your secret key? Remember, when they go through >> your house they bring 20 young graduates from MIT who are just dying >> to show how clever they are and save the world at the same time. > Keep your secret key in your head. I think this is hard to do in practice. I have tried. >>> This is the essence of steganography and the nature of signal and >>> noise are fundemental principles of information theory. >> >> The concept of noise is not all that well defined, however. There >> is no way to look at a signal and say "this is all noise." >> Sometimes physical theories may lead you to believe that it is all >> noise. That is fine for many applications, but when becomes less >> convinced of things if the consequences are severe. > Your plausible deniability has to get quite low before it will stand > up as "proof" in court. (This goes under 3.1 or 3.2 of my outline, which you may not have received yet.) My idea is that the lack of noise is used as evidence to get a search warrant. The search warrant is used to get the evidence to put you away forever. (This goes under 3.3 of the outline.) The severe penalties and significant chance of capture will keep the number of cryptoanarchists low. > Your real challenge is keeping your stego programs safe. Boot > strapping a stegoed encrypted file system while leaving no stego code > lying around isn't that easy. Excellent point, especially since you don't have an encrypted virtual disk. Can anybody resolve this? >>>> If you are not doing it by hand, you own terrorist software and will pay >>>> the price. >>> Ah yes, terrorist programs like cat and perl and operating systems like >>> Linux which contain a loopback filesystem that I can hook a perl >>> interpreter into at compile-time (which is enough for me to rewrite the >>> program from scratch each time if necessary, unless things like math >>> libraries are also outlawed on computers :) I think that the crypto >>> concentration camps are going to be very crowded places. >> Can you elaborate on this? I am curious to know exactly what you are going >> to keep in your head and what goes on the disk. Please post the Perl >> code that you would type in from scratch every time. > My specialty :-) > rc4 in C: > #define S,t=s[i],s[i]=s[j],s[j]=t /* rc4 key <file */ > unsigned char s[256],i,j,t;main(c,v)char**v;{++v;while > (s[++i]=i);while(j+=s[i]+(*v)[i%strlen(*v)]S,++i);for( > j=0;c=~getchar();putchar(~c^s[t+=s[i]]))j+=s[++i]S;} > rc4 in perl: > #!/usr/local/bin/perl -0777-- -export-a-crypto-system-sig -RC4-3-lines-PERL > @k=unpack('C*',pack('H*',shift));for(@t=@s=0..255){$y=($k[$_%@k]+$s[$x=$_ > ]+$y)%256;&S}$x=$y=0;for(unpack('C*',<>)){$x++;$y=($s[$x%=256]+$y)%256; > &S;print pack(C,$_^=$s[($s[$x]+$s[$y])%256])}sub S{@s[$x,$y]=@s[$y,$x]} (Under 3.3) I would have a hard time memorizing these programs. This pretty much guarantees that the number of cryptoanarchists will be small. (I am deeply envious of your legal right to post this code, however. Now, why was it that we broke away from the Mother Country?) I would like to see a longer exposition of your approach. Given a hostile environment, how would I operate a small anonymous perl coding service using your techniques? Don't forget to tell me how I get paid and when I get to spend my "ill-gotten" gains and how nobody will notice that I am doing it. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Black Unicorn exposed?
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:00 AM 11/9/1996, Robert Hettinga wrote: > S. L. vonBernhardt, <mailto:unicorn@schloss.li>,... Black Unicorn recently stated that had taken measures to shield his identity so that people would be unable to cause harm to his professional activities by making unsubstantiated claims that could scare off prospective clients. It appears now that this protection has evaporated. It will not be very hard in the future to put this information together with other statements people may make about Mr. Unicorn. We are hardly operating in a hostile environment. Yet, somebody who has apparently gone to some effort to have an anonymous identity has been exposed. The implications of this are worth considering. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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DCSB: Money Laundering -- The Headless Horseman of the Infocalypse
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----BY SAFEMAIL----- The Digital Commerce Society of Boston Presents "Black Unicorn" "Money Laundering -- The Headless Horseman of the Infocalypse" Tuesday, December 3, 1996 12 - 2 PM The Downtown Harvard Club of Boston One Federal Street, Boston, MA S. L. vonBernhardt, <mailto:unicorn@schloss.li>, is an attorney, a member of the board of directors of two European financial institutions, author of "Practical and Legal Problems Confronting the Asset Concealer in Relation to Offshore Financial and Corporate Entities" and a former member of the intelligence community. He is currently working to develop and preserve institutions dedicated to traditional standards of financial privacy. One of the most disturbing products of the "war on drugs" has been the effective criminalization of many forms of formerly legal financial transactions. The resulting legislation places serious burdens on financial institutions in the form of "due diligence" requirements, as well as building what can be an inflexible barrier before those who would implement uncompromised digital commerce systems. Mr. vonBernhardt will address the legislative burdens imposed on financial institutions, the likely impact on future systems of digital commerce, potential solutions through regulatory arbitrage, and the practical problems facing jurisdictions seeking to enforce regulations in the face of advanced systems of digital commerce. No cameras, please. This meeting of the Digital Commerce Society of Boston will be held on Tuesday, December 3, 1996 from 12pm - 2pm at the Downtown Branch of the Harvard Club of Boston, One Federal Street. The price for lunch is $27.50. This price includes lunch, room rental, and the speaker's lunch. ;-). The Harvard Club *does* have dress code: jackets and ties for men, and "appropriate business attire" for women. We need to receive a company check, or money order, (or, if we *really* know you, a personal check) payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", by Saturday, November 30, or you won't be on the list for lunch. Checks payable to anyone else but The Harvard Club of Boston will have to be sent back. Checks should be sent to Robert Hettinga, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02131. Again, they *must* be made payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston". If anyone has questions, or has a problem with these arrangements (We've had to work with glacial A/P departments more than once, for instance), please let us know via e-mail, and we'll see if we can work something out. Planned speakers for DCSB are: January Rodney Thayer Applying PGP To Digital Commerce February David Kaufman 1996 in Review / Predictions for 1997 We are actively searching for future speakers. If you are in Boston on the first Tuesday of the month, and you would like to make a presentation to the Society, please send e-mail to the DCSB Program Commmittee, care of Robert Hettinga, rah(a)shipwright.com . For more information about the Digital Commerce Society of Boston, send "info dcsb" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)ai.mit.edu . If you want to subscribe to the DCSB e-mail list, send "subscribe dcsb" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)ai.mit.edu . Looking forward to seeing you there! Cheers, Robert Hettinga Moderator, The Digital Commerce Society of Boston -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----BY SAFEMAIL----- Version: 1.0b4 e22 iQCVAwUBMoSp3PgyLN8bw6ZVAQFaqgP/XPH82Z2EcgEpIQ0V2YiySW7Zlh/mYcxz xxoYtwVg5YwYmdlT7ueqFwRyzf/KfI4/MbLSj1NB+pDh2yEpZlokIo+u0qJPfYgT aP/bQg7fKOJ3iwrQUTlJuuxhM2TlUcqSlZXymgvvq/VZnq6uygT2GSC/OxMBTGrg aUq8cXlnNaI= =U4Mr -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "The cost of anything is the foregone alternative" -- Walter Johnson The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/

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Re: New Linux-IPSEC mailing list for the S/WAN project
by stewarts＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:29 AM 11/9/96 -0800, John Gilmore <gnu(a)toad.com> wrote: >I'm sending you this message because you might be interested in >helping to build or test or document, or teach about, my S/WAN project >to secure 5% of the net by Christmas. > >There is now a public mailing list which you can join to find out >what's happening in the project, get the latest software for testing, >ask questions, etc. To join the list, send mail to: > linux-ipsec-REQUEST(a)clinet.fi >The email should contain a single line that just says: > subscribe Actually, it needs to say subscribe linux-ipsec # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk

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Re: A Disservice to Mr. Bell
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:18 PM 11/8/96 -0800, Peter Hendrickson wrote: >At 1:32 PM 11/8/1996, jim bell wrote: >>At 09:12 PM 11/7/96 -0800, Peter Hendrickson wrote: >>> ...His conviction was not reversed until 1983 in the court of one >>> Judge Patel... > >> However, the fact that it took 40 years to reverse (and didn't, presumably, >> reverse the convictions of others, and didn't compensate people for lost >> property) is yet another reason to take a few pieces out of the hide of the >> SC, as well as a few pounds of flesh nearest the heart. > >Many of us are guilty of a grave disservice to Mr. Bell. I'm sure >that just about every reader of this list can only cringe when >messages such as the one above cross our screens. ("He can't be >a paid provocateur - it would be too obvious!") > >Not only is Mr. Bell apparently calling for the murder of a judge, he >is apparently calling for the murder of every justice on the Supreme >Court of the United States! I'm glad to see that you seem to be catching on. (although you made the minor error of referring to the current roster of the SC, as opposed to the 1943 makeup. But that's a minor point; the 1996 group have their own set of offenses...) In any case, it's really very simple: Kidnapping used to be a capital offense in the US. What the US Government did to the Japanese Americans during WWII was, quite simply, kidnapping. Or, at least, it would have been called kidnapping if it had been done by non-governmental entities. True, it was done "under color of law," but ultimately it amounted to the same thing. Lawyers, who have brought hypocrisy and double-standards to a high art form, are taught to accept this. And they are also taught to fight (at least a bit) for their clients rights. But ultimately, they are taught to accept the decision of a court even if it's wrong. Sure, they may have appeal rights and will occasionally exercise them, but there's no court past the SC. It turns out, of course, that since we now all (?) accept the idea that those SC decisions were simply wrong, it isn't possible to use the "they said it was okay" excuse. The most of the relocations occurred before the decisions, which means the governmental actions were done without them. And I consider a temporary (even a 40-year) approval by a group of nine clowns to be no more definitive than a fresh conviction that hasn't yet been through its first appeal. Please note that if it were 1943 and somebody called for the death penalty for the perp of a kidnapping case, he'd probably be called a fine upstanding citizen. (Interestingly enough, one of the cornerstone objections a lawyer (or judge) might have to my "playing hardball" on this subject is their belief that judges should be immune from prosecution for their decisions. The strange part, however, is that judicial immunity seems to be an entirely fabricated concept: It appears nowhere in the US Constitution, for example.) However, it turns out that there is a solution to this problem, the recent re-emergence of the "Common-law courts." A truly fascinating subject. Having competed (with varying levels of disrespect on both sides) with so-called "Equity courts" in England since well before the 17th century, they frequently represented a bulwark against the misuse of royal authority. Competing court systems might be considered somewhat analogous to competing companies in the private sector: Monopolies breed abuse; competition results in better service. There is no reason to believe that this effect would be any less applicable in courts than other markets. They might merely be a historical curiousity in America, except that the American Revolution had the predictable effect (supported by US court decision, apparently) that as a consequence of George III's loss and our win, all powers previously vested in the King were returned to the American people. Some, but by no means all of them were delegated to the Federal government, as the 9th and 10th amendments show. The really interesting part is that the authority to form common-law courts was never delegated to the Federal government, and (perhaps not surprisingly, considering recent governmental abuses) a number of groups around the country have decided to form their own such commonlaw courts. To American ears this will probably sound a bit like "taking the law into your own hands," but those courts are quite real and I predict they will become a substantially more powerful force in the next few years. Since selection of judges is part of the powers originally owned by George III and lost by him, this means that ordinary people have the power to run those courts and staff them, as odd as this will feel to those of us who were brought up on Perry Mason et al. Naturally, you can expect numerous lawyers and judges (all who consider themselves part of the competing "equity court" system, BTW) to cry foul. The effect is somewhat akin to a child who initially shares a communal sandbox with a neighbor kid, who subsequently moves away and is replaced by a childless couple. After a few years of de-facto sole ownership, the feelings of monopoly ownership are quite real, even if in reality sharing must once again happen due to the arrival of new neighbors. Interestingly enough, the one thing the Commonlaw court system needs is an effective enforcement system. One likely method is the commercial lien process, but even that tends to be resisted by people who are far more used to dealing with equity court personnel. It turns out that my AP system seems to mesh almost perfectly with their needs, although obviously in practice it would only be used as a "last resort." Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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