- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: Blanc Weber / Positivist Schill
by paul＠fatmans.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Are you part of a cypherpunks list conspiracy to balance my > cynicism? Are you actually suggesting that there may be a spark > of hope for mankind to prevail in the battle with the forces of > mindless robotic sheepnocity? There is little hope unless we kill around 70% of the population of the planet, those untouched by western "democracy" or the totalitarian autocracies of the mid and far east are the only people sure to be mentally capable of comprehending the ethical theory and idealogy of anarchism. > You seem to be one of the eternal optimists who can even see > the possible good in AP. One does not need to be an optimist to see the good in AP, merely capable of following a logical chain of thought without allowing yourself to react to things rather than really considering them. > I suggested in a recent post that perhaps Green Peace could use > the AP system to drain the profit margins of whalers without > actually causing their death. Of course, I was low on Scotch at > the time, so my idea cannot be taken seriously. I am low on Jack Daniels at the moment, so I too am not functioning as usual. Reality is merely a halucination brought on by lack of alcohol. Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul(a)crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul(a)cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: 5BBFAEB1 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

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Re: Adam Back speaks out on AP / was: Jim Bell? Never heard of him.
by lucifer＠dhp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Adam Back wrote: > Anonymous writes: > There is a cost with > anonymity: people take you less seriously, none of your reputation is > on the line. Anonmous persistent personas might be better as they > allow reputation to be tracked. True, if your concern is to be listened to by those concerned about reputation. If your aim is for your post to stand upon its own facts and logic, however, then a 0-reputation persona may be preferable. There were a series of "Jim Bell is a loon." postings which I found to be uninformative in regard to the points they seemed to want to ramrod past the readers by virtue of discounting the message via slamming the messenger. > > So the end result might well be, not the assassination of those > > involved, but the lessening of their power by virtue of depleting > > their funds, which leads to a more equal playing field. > > I'm not sure this follows. > > If a corporate can use it's wealth to influence other groups, for > example by assasinating key employees of opposition company, it may > well get richer as a result. I see the value of AP not in the assassination of others, but in the potential for a wide-ranging group of individuals to drain the assets of their oppressors. Large grocery chains have a history of moving into an area, then undercutting the little guys until they are forced out of business, whereupon they raise their prices outrageously, unfettered by competition. AP might well serve as an avenue for the little guys to band together to target these operations and remove the profitability of this mode of monopolistic attack. The TruthMonger multi-user persona might well serve as a similar example of raising the cost of doing "character assassination" business. I might well be Jim Bell, himself. However, rather than saying, "Jim Bell is a loon, so we can discount all of TruthMonger's arguments.", one is forced to deal with the validity of the arguments, facts, and logic in the posts. Certainly a persona with built-up reputation capital can be an asset in many situations, but there is also a time when anonymous communications can serve as a conduit for weaning out those enamored with personality issues, and who lack the discernment to judge the true content and logic underlying a message. TruthMonger

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ZDNet Announces HealthyPC.com!
by announce＠lists.zdnet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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AP--the choice of Postal Workers everywhere
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

snow wrote: > Crispy Critters wrote: > > you are either born into that social contract, or you move > > into it. In either case the social contract that makes up the state > > predates your involvement. You are free to accept or reject the > > terms of that social contract. If you chose to reject them, then you > > should leave -- since the individuals who composed that contract were > > there before you, their rights take priority. > > BULLSHIT. I don't have a choice. I would like to leave, but > everywhere is already claimed by fucking statist pricks. There is no > place left where a person can go and be free of self important pricks > who think that it is _their_ right to infringe on _my_ rights. Since the land thieves have everything locked up, the only option is to stand and fight. Wise conquerers always leave the disenchanted a small, desolate place they can go to lick their wounds. The current fascists idiots in power don't have the sense to do that. The result is a civilization that is falling apart because those who don't want to take it in the ass have no option except to stick around and fight. > If the contract was written by people who no longer exist, and > enforced from the top, by force then you _do_ have the right to change > the system from without. Especially since (in the context of American, > French, and several other "[un]social contracts") they were themselves > brought about by force and violence, often with the support of less than > a majority. And you can never ignore the 'majority of one'. If the government deems it their right to act as they will, as a result of being heavily armed, then they complain in vain about the individual deeming it their right to act as they will, as a result of being heavily armed. What is good for the gander (government) is good for the goose (postal worker). -- Toto "The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre" http://bureau42.base.org/public/xenix/xenbody.html

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Re: Feds reading this list, Jim Bell, and threats
by Kent Crispin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Mon, Apr 07, 1997 at 07:24:03PM -0600, Toto wrote: > Kent Crispin wrote: > > > > I think it is fairly clear that AP is a Chimera. The problem with > > lurid fantasies like it, though, is that they give the press and > > politicians convenient targets. In fact, a case could be made for > > considering Jim Bell as a NSA shill. Certainly he is a perfect foil > > for a statist agenda. > > So, now Kent is volunteering to testify to the fact that Jim Bell is > an NSA shill. (and still seems ashamed of his .gov address) Just so you know, Toto, .gov informs me it doesn't want there to be the slightest possibility of anyone thinking I am speaking for it. And the part about Jim Bell being an NSA shill? I am not volunteering to testify to anything, but your are the *second* person to say something about it, so it *must* be true. And the part about the statist agenda? That must be true too, since you quoted it. > I am waiting for a post from Kent that is sufficiently lucid that it > can be replied to without drinking an extra bottle of Scotch to follow > his twisted trail of logic. You needed that extra bottle anyway. -- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent(a)songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html

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Re: Wassenaar Arrangement now available
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Greg Broiles wrote: > In early March, I filed a FOIA request with the Arms Control & Disarmament > Agency, a division of the Department of State, for a copy of the Wassenaar > Arrangement, a multinational agreement which is intended to regulate and > coordinate the regulation of military and "dual-use" items. (Cryptographic > software and hardware is often considered a "dual-use" item.) > > I received a copy of the Arrangement last week, and have converted it to > HTML. It is available on the web at > > <http://www.parrhesia.com/wassenaar/>, or > <https://www.parrhesia.com/wassenaar/> for the security-conscious. > > The document itself does not refer to cryptography or cryptographic > software/hardware. The last page of the document - the "Munitions List" was > blank; but the document was marked "released in full". I'm going to compare > what I've got with the various pieces of the Arrangement which have been > released through other sources to see if I need to make a supplemental > request for more information. The disparity between various informational 'releases' of information surrounding the Wassenaar Agreement points to the real intentions of those involved, which is to regulate the availability to strong crypto not so much through legislation, as through uncertainty surrounding legal issues which can result in severe penalties to those who might chance to cross ill-defined legal lines. In a previous post, I mentioned a law enforcement official who responded to my question about one of the finer points of the law with the reply, "I'm not paid to 'know' the law, I'm paid to 'enforce' it." i.e. No matter what action you perform, the interpretation that the government uses to fuck you in the ass will take an opposite position on the matter. I have seen back-to-back cases in the same courtroom, with the same judge, where government prosecutors argued diametrically opposed positions in order to convict the accused. The result? Two convictions. -- Toto "The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre" http://bureau42.base.org/public/xenix/xenbody.html

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Re: Cuba and AP
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hallam-Baker, counting on cypherpunks readers to be unwitting victims of ten second sound-byte mentality, wrote: > > If people want to see the effect of an AP society have a look at Cuba. > Under the Batista regime $50 was sufficient to have someone killed. > There was anarchy, the police were corrupt, the mafia ran most of the > few parts of the country that worked - even they found the lack of order > a problem. > > The result was Fidel Castro. The Batista regime could neither reform nor > survive. Any society that was threatened by AP would likewise collapse. So Hallam-Baker recognizes the AP system as a valid way to bring about the collapse of unpopular, corrupt dictatorships. > It is important to distinguish liberty and libertines. The libertine > recognises no check on individual rights, even when they affect the > rights of others. The inevitable result of libertinage is > authoritarianism. The result of men living together on the face of the earth leads to the inevitable result of authoritarianism. Systems such as "Assassination Politics" can aide in fighting against unbearable corruption of power by lowering the cost of assassination and thus raising the cost of corruption. The stench in Cuba was so bad under the U.S. backed Batista regime that Guerva and Castro were a breath of fresh air for the majority of Cuban people. Despite years of harassment, invasion, and economic attack on Cuba by the shameless 'free' countries <yuk,yuk> of the world, Castro is still a better option for the Cuban people than other options. When this ceases to be the case, then another variation of the Cuban AP system will arise (perhaps Bell's?), and we will see the rise of a new Cuban government. Despite the grand support the IRS is receiving from the government- owned members of the cypherpunks list, it can hardly be argued that the U.S. government has a problem with "Assassination Politics," since they have availed themselves of it in the past, but only with the power of AP being in the hands of the citizens instead of their own ruling hands. TruthMonger (#7)

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Bell case and the liability of information...
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text X-Sender: pswire(a)pop.service.ohio-state.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 09:54:35 -0400 Reply-To: Law & Policy of Computer Communications <CYBERIA-L(a)LISTSERV.AOL.COM> Sender: Law & Policy of Computer Communications <CYBERIA-L(a)LISTSERV.AOL.COM> From: Peter Swire <swire.1(a)OSU.EDU> Subject: Re: America Online and liability for dissemination of informatio To: CYBERIA-L(a)LISTSERV.AOL.COM At 09:23 PM 4/6/97 -0700, Bob Stock wrote: >Someone said: >>>Look at it this way: what if this anonymous one had gone to his >>>local library, went through the newspapers and collected >>>classified ad forms. Then sent them all in, publishing >>>classifieds which said the same thing in 20 newspapers across the >>>country. > >>the newspapers which published those ads would have >>potential liability if they were negligent in their fact checking >>before publishing them. > >Newspapers are legally required to check the facts of classified ads >before publishing them in order to escape any potential libel >liability? You can't be serious. Sorry. Check out the cases that Soldier of Fortune magazine lost for failing to check its classified ads. The cases involved "gun for hire" classifieds, someone got shot, and the estate was permitted to sue the magazine. The tort analysis used a Hand test, in which the cost of screening the classified (on its face an invitation to commit a deadly crime) was found to be less than the cost to society of allowing the magazine to run such ads. The facts of SOF are very special, but they show at least one scenario where courts have found liability for running a classified ad. Regards, Peter Prof. Peter Swire Ohio State University College of Law e-mail: swire.1(a)osu.edu web: http://www.osu.edu/units/law/swire.htm (in early stages of construction) --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA Lesley Stahl: "You mean *anyone* can set up a web site and compete with the New York Times?" Andrew Kantor: "Yes." Stahl: "Isn't that dangerous?" The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/

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Re: [off topic] Feds reading this list, Jim Bell, and threats
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

John Young writes: > On Phil Hallam-Baker's rejoinder to Paul Bradley' defense of AP: > Virtually all of Phil's charges against AP apply equally well to > state-sponsored killing in the natonal interest, including that > arranged by highly educated, cultured, philosophical, nuclear > physicists and electrical engineers. > That's the issue. Who gets to decide who lives and who dies, and > how close the killer is to the slaughter, unprotected by law, by > public consensus, by popular will, by apologetics for the security > of national interest. I think John has here hit the crucial point. *Any* form of killing in cold blood - whether state sponsored executions, AP-sponsored killings, or just plain hired hit-men, has the initiator of the killing taking onto him or herself the power of life and death over others. This is not a power which I feel can be used in an ethical manner, since it's exercise is totally irrevocable. Thus, I oppose the death penalty, even in the most egregious cases. Deciding who should live and who should die is simply not a proper power for a State, nor for any person. I have much less of a problem when a person is killed in an act of defense, in the heat of the moment. [Yup, I know that that leaves a big fuzzy area in the middle, but most cases are pretty clear]. Peter Trei trei(a)process.com

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Re: Anonymous Mailing Lists
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Toto wrote: > > I'm not certain, being far from an expert on remailers and > > majordomos. I've had one person indicate that majordomos could > > be configured to keep all users anonymous, but didn't know > > if it could be done selectively in the case of anonymous > > remailers. He is supposed to get back to me on it. A few years ago, I maintained a low-traffic mailing list in which the users could be anonymous to each other - I was the only person who knew the recipient list. I used perl scripts to manage it, and manually edited messages which requested anonymity (it was a digest-style list). A perl script individually mailed copies to about 600 recipients. It worked, but was not scalable to higher traffic volumes. Peter Trei trei(a)process.com

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