- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: seeds of our own destruction
by Attila T. Hun 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <32E72BCB.3CBA(a)deltanet.com>, on 01/23/97 at 01:13 AM, Kevin Stephenson <cts(a)deltanet.com> said: +You wrote some very interesting articles. It is the UN. if you want a real scare, read the UN "world constitution" on human rights and privacy --their idea of a Bill of Rights. It just happens that it is virtually word for word equivalent to the mainland Chinese "rights" -in other words: rights as long as they are consistent with the aims of the state (UN) and the security needs of the state at the given moment. ...and the UN is to be granted overall sovereignity by virtue of the right to unilateraly tax its 'member' states, and not necessarily in an equitable fashion. to put it in context, it is clearly the havenots reducing everyone to the status of havenot; there will be no others. this, of course, will eventually give way to tribal governments and the cycle will start over after the population is reduced by its own pollution and starvation to a new balance with nature. disease, more than starvation, will be the biggest killer. men will be too hungry, and too sick, to fight until it stabilizes. there will be exceptions, of course, but they will lack sufficient power to extend their sphere of influence before they are overrun by the mass, or destroyed by chemical and germ warfare in the last gasp. the meaning of the 144,000 becomes more clear... +Read Revelations (if you haven't). have more than several textbooks on it, and have taught classes on Revelation. however, I strongly believe the interpretations are still 'every man for himself' --presuming, of course, the propounder has at least the prerequisite grounding and understanding in the fundamental concepts, starting with John the Revelator, who never died, and why portions of the book are sealed. the best general reference on symbology, at least of what I have seen so far: Opening the Seven Seals (The Visions of John the Revelator) Richard D. Draper Desert Books, Salt Lake City ISBN 087579-547-1, SKU 2142298 +Maybe put some scriptures on cypherpunks. casting pearls before swine? +Happy Armageddon. Frances Ford Coppola wasted the good title: 'Apocolypse Now' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: Encrypted with 2.6.3i. Requires 2.6 or later. iQCVAwUBMuc64b04kQrCC2kFAQFXBwP/RhEeldizuSelbrHtfCSDsrwRaT0hn1qd e/j6Q0IPHMkzrFS+bnTGia5hLogTgU61tdvq38AGlRt2LpQZVekStZqCog4Jfmx0 olK1xzpNEr71UsDxxYe5ooIhHwWVWfZsxtj6k8/eSYtLbontN+BCHbk6V+Py3BOi HOpugpbs8V4= =2XXx -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: If you were unable to download UDCM V2.0 before...
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Krenn wrote: > Oh most certainly! I'm gonna run out and implement EVERYTHING in UDCM!! > Thanks man!! Yours is the post these guys have been waiting for. All of those other CypherPunks just 'flamed' them by asking technical questions about their products. Who knows, they may make you their marketing manager. Toto

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Re: THE NEW YORKER on the V-Chip
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:57 PM 1/23/97 -0800, Alan Bostick wrote: >In the Jan. 20, 1997, issue of THE NEW YORKER, the "Comment", written by >Malcolm Gladwell, makes a powerful arguement about the unintended >consequences of the V-Chip, the programmable device to be included in >next-generation television sets sold in the US that supposedly will >allow parents to control their children's access to sex and violence on >TV. While I think it's always useful to consider unintended (or otherwise unexpected) consequences, Gladwell's argument sent a shiver down my spine with its shameless paternalism. This bit (from roughly the middle of his piece) is what I found creepiest: "According to one recent study, somewhere between twenty and twenty-seven per cent of the parents of four-to six-year-olds never restrict their children's viewing hours, never decide what programs they can watch, never change the channel when something objectionable comes on, and never forbid the watching of certain programs. It has apparently never occurred to these parents that television can be a bad influence, and it strains credulity to think that the advent of the V-chip is going to wake them up. Yet their families - mainly lower-income, ill-educated - are the very ones most in need of protection from television violence. Here is a rearranging effect with a vengeance: not only does the V-chip make television worse, it makes television worse precisely for those already most vulnerable to its excesses." I understood Gladwell's point to be, in essence, that the V-chip will allow TV producers to generate higher levels of morally impure content which he fears will pollute the minds of poor children because their parents are too stupid to protect them from the harmful content and too poor to buy new televisions which will include V-chips. While I think 95% of broadcast TV is crap which isn't worth the time expended watching it, even reading arguments like "poor people should be protected from harmful ideas they're too stupid (or too poorly educated) to avoid and too poor to purchase protection from" makes me feel dirty. I don't think Gladwell is, in any meaningful way, an opponent of government control of speech/expression - he's just an opponent of inefficient or optional forms of government control of speech/expression. He's a reasonable writer, but he's chosen to use his powers for evil instead of for good. (Some of his work is available on the web; apparently he once worked as a reporter for the Washington Post and is now on the staff of the New Yorker.) -- Greg Broiles | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell: gbroiles(a)netbox.com | http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | Export jobs, not crypto. |

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PSS_sst
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

New Scientist of 25 January reviews the Bernstein's case against crypto export, US global seduction of foreign goverrments to suppress domestic calls for privacy, and therewith deftly alerts British leaders and readers to undermining the "secretive bureaucratic" Uncle Sam scam, says the deft-underminer cpunkers quoted. ----- PSS_sst

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Re: Rejection policy of the Cypherpunks maiing list
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Igor Chudov @ home wrote: > > My perfectly crypto-relevant article regarding possible attacks > on human relationships with the use of forged mail and anonymous > remailers, has been tossed out (sorted) into cypherpunks-flames > mailing list. I have noticed that the 'sorting' of messages seems to be based as much on personality as upon content. > The explanation that Sandy Sandfort gave me mentioned that he rejected > my message because it continued a thread where Sandy noticed instances > of "flaming". Note that my message was free of any flames, including > its quoted part. The standard of what constitutes a 'flame' seems to rest very much upon whom a comment is directed at, or merely 'vaguely toward'. There have been more than a few postings stronly lambasting various generic grouping of individuals which have passed without censoring. Your post, however, included Dr. Dimitri's vague reference to a homosexual 'elite'. While it was directed toward no one in particular, I suppose one could 'infer', from his past postings, that it referred to certain individuals, or a group of individuals. So it would seem that, in quoting the posts of others, one must take into consideration what various readers may infer from their previous posts. > Sandy also states rather plainly that crypto-relevance is not the > criterion by which he moderates this list. This was more than obvious to anyone who cared to cast an objective eye on the process, but their input was pooh-paah'd by the 'washed masses'. > I would like to hear your opinions as to whether such policies satisfy > the current readership. Like all of the 'opinions' that were expressed prior to the censorship of the list? I haven't seen any indication that these opinions were given the slightest consideration. This is not the readership's list. It is a private individual's list. My view of Sandy's moderation is that it is rather willy-nilly, and not done particularly objectively. There have been personal insults directed toward various individuals, including myself, which seem not to have been considered 'flames', while there are more than a few posts which, even on the closest of inspection, I can see no reason for dumping the the 'flame-crapper', other than the fact that they are somewhat associated to the 'unclean' list members. The moderation, at best, seems to encourage 'snide' commentary meant to be ill-disguised cheap-shots. I would much rather have list members taking strong, clean shots at their 'targets', than to be subjected to two-faced people talking out of the side of their mouths. In short, I don't see the moderation as being 'fair', and I don't think it was ever meant to be. I don't have a problem with this, since it's a private list, and, as far as I am concerned, the list-owner can censor it, or have it censored, any way he or she sees fit. I would like to point out, however, that anyone who has had their posts 'sorted' into the 'flames list' is now a 'known flamer', as evidenced by the fact that their post has been designated a 'flame' on a list run by a champion of free speech on the electronic frontier. It is obvious that some of the more intuitively intelligent list members are aware of this, as is indicated by the nervous fear with which they 'explain why' their post is crypto-relevant. Toto

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Hi there...
by btrest＠octonline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Speaker needed
by Tobin Fricke 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

If anyone is going to be in south Orange County, California during the third week in March, and is interested in speaking to a group of high school students on Cryptography and the political and economic considerations involved, please contact me via email at tobin(a)mail.edm.net. Thank you. (I'm not on cypherpunks, so don't email the list.) Tobin

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Coalition Letter on Privacy and Airline Security
by Dave Banisar 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A HTML version of this is available at http://www.epic.org/privacy/faa/airline_security_letter.html February 11, 1997 Vice President Albert Gore, Jr. The White House 1600 Pennsylvanpia Ave, NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. Vice President, We are writing to you to express our views on the serious civil liberties issues raised by recent government activities in the name of airline security. These include recent orders issued by the Federal Aviation Administration, and also proposals recommended by the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security and the FAA Advisory Aviation Security Advisory Committee. Many of these proposals were developed in the highly-charged atmosphere following the still-unsolved crash of TWA Flight 800 and reflect a misguided rationale that something had to be done, no matter how marginal in value or violative of individual rights. We all feel strongly that air travel must be safe - nobody wants to feel that to set foot on an airplane or an airport is to take a substantial safety risk. However, basic civil liberties protected by the Constitution should not be sacrificed in the name of improving air safety, especially where the potential benefits are questionable. At the airport ticket counter, passengers check their luggage, not their constitutional rights. Identification One area of concern is a secret FAA order issued in August 1995 and apparently revised in October 1995. The FAA order purportedly requires airlines to demand government-issued photo identification from all passengers before they can board an airplane. It remains unclear whether a passenger must provide that identification and what discretion an airline has to allow, or refuse, any passenger to board if they refuse to provide identification or simply do not have any available. Americans are not required to carry government-issued identification documents. Any requirement that passengers show identification raises substantial constitutional questions about violations of the rights to privacy, travel, and due process of law. The Supreme Court has consistently struck down laws that interfere with the constitutional right to travel. The Court has also overturned laws in a variety of circumstances that require an individual to provide identification in the absence of any specific suspicion that a crime has been committed. In addition, it is unclear that requiring passenger boarding an aircraft to identify him or herself actually makes the people with whom they travel any safer. A bomber with a fake ID is just as effective as a bomber with no ID. We urge the FAA to withdraw its directive and to notify airlines that identification should not be requested for security reasons. At a minimum, the FAA should require airlines to post notices telling passengers that they cannot be denied boarding just because they fail or refuse to identify themselves. Computer Databases and Profiling Another major concern involves the proposed increased utilization of the practice of "profiling" passengers to determine whether they pose a security risk and should thus be searched. This would require the collection of personal information on passengers prior to their boarding a plane. Information that may be collected includes a picture or other biometric identifier, address, flying patterns with a particular airline, bill paying at a particular address, criminal records, and other information. This, and information gleaned from observing the persons with whom the passenger was traveling, would be fed into a computer data base that would be used to decide whether the passenger "fits the profile" and should be subjected to heightened security measures. Under this proposal, the checked luggage of people selected by the computer would be scanned by new sophisticated scanning devices. The risks to privacy are enormous and run not only to those who "fit the profile." For this system to be useful, it must apply to every person who might take a flight, i.e., to everybody. A new government dossier on everyone would have to be created, computerized, and made accessible to airline personnel. In addition, for the system to be useful, it would have to be linked to other data bases and constantly updated. Each time a person changes their address or takes another flight, or does anything related to the characteristics about them deemed significant by the profiling system, the government would track it. All of our experience with the creation and updating of such ever-changing data bases teaches us that the likelihood of inaccuracy at any given moment is high. The FBI, for instance, recognizes that data in its computer system of criminal records has an inaccuracy rate of 33 percent. Such inaccuracy would lead to both a breach of safety and to violations of the rights of innocent people. This proposal is a quick fix that won't fix anything. The proposal also violates a central principle of the Code of Fair Information Practices and the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C § 552a): information given to the government for one purpose ought not be used for other purposes without the consent of the person to whom it pertains. The use of criminal records in such a data base, particularly where those records include arrests that do not result in convictions, is particularly troubling. Profiling also frequently leads to discriminatory practices. Already, we have received numerous reports of discrimination against individuals and families with children who have been refused entry onto aircraft because their names appeared to be of Middle-Eastern origin. In the well publicized example of security guard Richard Jewel, reports indicated that the FBI profile led the police to unfairly target Mr. Jewel for the incident, even in the absence of other evidence. This incident vividly shows the limitations of basing a law enforcement decision on a profile. We urge the FAA and airlines to discontinue the use of passenger profiling. X-Ray Cameras We also view with concern proposals to install in airports new cameras which can depict highly detailed images of individuals' bodies under their clothes. Existing scanners, the development of which was partially funded by the FAA, already show a revealing and invasive picture of a naked body in high detail and the technology is likely to improve. This is clearly a search under the Fourth Amendment and is far more intrusive than a standard metal screening device. Passengers should not be subject to an "electronic strip search" in order to board an aircraft. To expose travelers' anatomies to the general public or even to selected (not by the victim of the unreasonably intrusive search) strangers is extremely embarrassing and shocking to the conscience. We urge the FAA to reject proposals to use body scanners capable of projecting an image of a person's naked body. Secrecy Much of the key decision-making surrounding these proposals has been shrouded by secrecy. The FAA has claimed that it is exempt from open government laws and has refused to release its directives on profiling and identification. Relevant meetings have been closed to the public or limited to participants who can afford to pay expensive fees. We urge the FAA to publish its directives and open all further decision making open to public scrutiny. Conclusion In conclusion, we believe that these proposals raise grave constitutional issues and are likely to produce only minimally beneficial results to improve airline safety. We urge the FAA and the advisory commissions to focus their efforts on improving security in a balanced and rational manner that is open to public scrutiny and consistent with constitutional rights. Sincerely, Houeida Saad American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee Greg Nojeim American Civil Liberties Union Maher Hanania American Federation of Palestine James Lucier, Jr., Director of Economic Research Americans for Tax Reform Aki Namioka, President Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility Lori Fena, Executive Director Electronic Frontier Foundation David Banisar, Staff Counsel Electronic Privacy Information Center Ned Stone Friends Committee on National Legislation Judy Clarke, President National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Kit Gage, Washington Representative National Committee Against Repressive Legislation Audrie Krause, Executive Director NetAction Sharisa Alkhateeb North American Council of Muslim Womem Simon Davies, Director General Privacy International Robert Ellis Smith, Publisher Privacy Journal Evan Hendricks, Chairman US Privacy Council and Publisher, The Privacy Times Enver Masud Executive Director The Wisdom Fund John Gilmore Civil Libertarian and co-founder, The Electronic Frontier Foundation ------- David Banisar (Banisar(a)epic.org) * 202-544-9240 (tel) Electronic Privacy Information Center * 202-547-5482 (fax) 666 Pennsylvania Ave, SE, Suite 301 * HTTP://www.epic.org Washington, DC 20003 * PGP Key http://www.epic.org/staff/banisar/key.html

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Re: List! No Way: Creati
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:23 PM 2/11/97 -0500, harka(a)nycmetro.com wrote: >Were it possible to use Perry's PGPDomo, which would effectively >keep out at least the Spammers? That'll keep out the outside spammers; it won't keep out anybody trying to attack the list (if people can do that with remailers, they can figure out how to do it with PGP...) # 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/pub/crypto/pgp # (If this is a mailing list, please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)

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Re: anonymity and e-cash
by Hal Finney 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: tcmay(a)got.net (Tim May) > You missed a very good talk by Ian Goldberg of UC Berkeley at the Saturday > Cypherpunks meeting at Stanford, where Ian talked for more than an hour on > just this issue. (He also talked for an hour on his crack of the RSA > challenge using 250 workstations...this was also a good talk.) I wish I could have heard that, it sounds good... A simple idea we have discussed for full anonymity uses the idea of exchanging coins at the bank. You make an anonymous connection to the bank, supply some ecash you have received along with some blinded new ecash. The bank verifies that the ecash is good and signs your blinded ecash, sending it back to you. You unblind it and have good, fresh smelling ecash which you can keep, spend, or later deposit in your account. If the merchant performs this exchange operation on-line as soon as he receives ecash, then his anonynmity is protected. The customer is protected too, by the blinding he used when he withdrew the ecash earlier. So both sides remain anonymous. It sounds like Ian may have worked out details of a system where third parties do these exchanges. Banks may be reluctant to allow them for liability reasons, and the market, abhoring the vacuum, will supply intermediaries who perform exchanges for a fee. Resolving the various forms of cheating is the hard part. When Lee asks about a signed receipt, it is hard to understand what is the point if the seller is fully anonymous! A signed receipt from a freshly-minted key is not of much use to anyone. If the participants are using persistant pseudonyms then whatever reputation capital they have can be put on the line when cheating happens, although it still may be hard to tell who cheated whom. Did the customer pass bad cash and claim it was good, or did the merchant deposit good cash and claim it was bad? The same thing could happen every day at the supermarket, of course. A customer insists they paid $20 but got change for a $10. If dozens of customers say the same thing has happened to them, we start to mistrust the market, while if several businesses say this particular customer has made the same claim to them, we blame the customer. Hal

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