- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: More on "Fraud" and Anguilla
by Vincent Cate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I've been thinking about this whole "Taxbomber" issue of "fraud." Again, what I said was my lawyer called and said it was illegal to sell fake passports in Anguilla. The fraud was taxbomber saying he never sold fake passports in his post to the net of "feel sorry for me my ISP made me relocate even though I never sold fake passports". > (I'm > still not completely sure whether Taxbomber lost his account at Offshore > Information Services Ltd. because: > > a) what he was offering actually violated Anguillan law (was there a > determination that selling camouflage passports violates a specific > statute?) My lawyer, probably the top lawyer in the country, said it is illegal in Anguilla. I don't have a copy of that law. > b) what he was offering constituted fraud (to whom? His customers certainly > knew what they were buying. To potential victims in the future?) Not clear if it is defined as fraud by the law. > c) he brought unwelcome attention to Anguilla in general and to Offshore > Information Services Ltd. in particular. (Vince's mention that the whole > island had read the story suggests something to this.) This is part of it. If nobody knew where he was things might have continued as they were. I mention it as a lesson learned. > d) he violated some particular clause of his service agreement with > Offshore Information Services Ltd. We did not have any contract. I have since posted a page with the policy. Fair point. > Now I read from this that Vince is encouraging "multi-level-marketing > companies" to use his service. Am I wrong on this? > > Another name for this, commonly used, is "pyramid scheme." Or "Ponzi > scheme." Well, multi-level marketing does not need to be pyramid scheme, but you are right that it could be bad news. So I have taken off that encouragement from my web page. Thanks. -- Vince ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Vincent Cate vince(a)offshore.com.ai http://www.offshore.com.ai/vince/ Offshore Information Services http://www.offshore.com.ai/

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Political Burnout
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To those of you who are tired of the Republican National Convention. And particularly to those who are ALREADY tired of the Democrat National Convention, despite the fact that it hasn't started yet. Remember those irritating signs beside the road, advertising some new apartment complex or housing development that you pass on the way home? You know, the ones which say, "If you lived here, you'd be home by now." Well, as you watch these conventions (conventia?), imagine a sign on the Information Superhighway, just up ahead. It says: "If your country were operated under the principles of 'Assassination Politics', not only would this convention be over by now, it wouldn't have even started!" We return you to your regularly scheduled farce. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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yet ANOTHER "Internet == child porn "story.
by I=(!isnum(self)) 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Again on today's CBS all-news stn. An elementary school teacher arrested for exchanging, or whatever, kiddieporn on the Internet. The reporter was duly dramatic and ominous sounding. Damn I wish I knew how many kiddie porners were doing their whatver OFF the 'net. Maybe, my fine friends, we're catching MORE o' them because they are on the net and clueless, rather than in back alleys and hard to find. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Recommended reading: "Manufacture of Consent", Noam Chomsky. Altho I hate much of his politics, that one's right on.

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Re: PGP...
by Bjorn E. Andersson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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[SIGNAL] Microsoft's Internet Explorer
by Frank Stuart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sorry, no rants, economic theories, or chemistry questions, but... According to C-Net Radio (http://www.cnet.com/) Microsoft will be including 128-bit SSL encryption in their Internet Explorer 3.0 for Win 95 and NT 4.0. It took a bit of digging but I finally found the Microsoft press release at "http://www.microsoft.com/corpinfo/press/1996/aug96/128SECpr.htm". | (Douglas) Hofstadter's Law: | It always takes longer than you expect, even Frank Stuart | when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

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Re: Anguilla - A DataHaven?
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Vince Cate has written several things in the past couple of days about the situation in Anguilla; actually, I think we've learned more about the operation of his service in the last few days than we have in the past year or so. Some instructive points, and some worries. This message contains: * discussion of the situation Vince describes * what I surmise to be some of the behind the scenes realpolitik * the role of physical vs. cyberspace data havens Rather than respond point by point to one of Vince's messages, I'll first make a few general points, free-form: 1. As I have said, I admire what Vince has done. Evolutionary learning can't happen without experiments and tests, so his experiment is important. 2. If Vince ends up moving in a direction different from that of operating a traditional (!) data haven, I will not be very surprised. Were I in his position, I might well do the same thing. (Lots of reasons, issues....)\ 3. Vince seems to be a in a somewhat precarious position, awaiting renewal of a one-year work permit. In any country, this is a shaky basis for continuing a project. I certainly don't know what his relationship is to the local authorities, but I sure know I'd feel constrained if I were up for renewal like this. (Consider how the U.S. refuses to renew visas for "undesirables," including writers whose writings the establishment dislikes, AIDS activists, anarchists (!!!), etc.) 4. The small size of Anguilla--I surmise and feel--works against operating the kind of "data haven" many of us feel could exist. Given that data havens will have all sorts of unusual, undesirable, and subversive materials, this "small community" will probably react unfavorably to any publicity generated. (And it's in the nature of some of these customers to "advertise" themselves flamboyantly--unlike Swiss banking--so as to generate customers...this pretty much guarantees that there will be stories like "Anguilla--New Source for Neo-Nazi Material!") 5. In the U.S., there are 250 million people, extensive support networks for protecting free speech (much as we like to focus on the suppression cases), and a legal system that really does make it pretty hard for a bureaucrat or even the President to pick up a phone and have a business he doesn't like shut down. I surmise, given the size of Anguilla and the non-constitutional basis of its government, etc., that it _might_ be a lot easier for a bureaucrat or the Governor-General, or whomever, to seriously disrupt any business by a few phone calls. I don't know this for a fact, but I suspect it to be true. (The closest I've been to Anguilla is the Bahamas, and it is reported to be seriously corrupt. I can't imagine a data haven surviving there if the Ruling Families decided they didn't like it.) 6. So, what does this mean? It means, I believe, that small Carribbean islands are likely to be poor choices for data havens. The more "civilized" they are, ironically, the poorer a choice they are. (Think: pirate islands, where "anything goes," so long as the right payoffs are made.) 7. Multidimensionality. With banking havens, there is basically only a single degree of freedom to consider, at least insofar as deciding which policies to consider. That is, over a period of many decades a banking industry arises in some country (Switzerland, Austria, Lichtenstein, etc.), with bankers, vaults, protocols for deposit and withdrawal, etc. And with lots of fees to lubricate the whole system, provided payoffs to various officials and royals, etc. Contrast this with a small data haven (a new industry) in a small country, with operating margins that are razor-thin (given the pricing structure Vince announced, I doubt Taxbomber and other customers were paying enough to ensure a flow of payoffs to the Ruling Families of Anguilla and the various officials that need to look the other way). 8. That is, how will a data haven handle situations where diverse "threats" and "abominations" are traced to the haven? Bomb information, pornography, child porn, trade secrets, pyramid schemes, and so on? (Vince can of course say to each of these: "Not what I want," but he may find that such ad hoc declarations chase away most of his business...) 9. In summary, I applaud Vince's experiment. But I wouldn't call it a data haven, based on what I've seen. Maybe a tax haven, but even this I have yet to see much evidence for (Vince is not free to disclose who his customers are, of course, so we are somewhat isolated.). I will say that if the only goal is to avoid sales tax and/or income taxes, operating out of Anguilla may not be ideal. After all, suppose there's a dispute (a la Taxbomber): is one supposed to fly to Anguilla, hire local attorneys, and sue in the local courts? The tens of thousands of dollars this would cost would likely swamp any tax savings.....depends on a lot of factors, but I think you all see the point. Well, I've written enough. Vince asked me a few specific questions, so I'll briefly answer: >Tim, we would all be very happy if you were to locate a country that could >be the site of the ideal datahaven, and finance a couple cypherpunks to >setup there. It would be a big help to our cause. Could you do this? Yes and no. Yes, if a good business opportunity presented itself, with reasonable payback, good ideological basis, and without too many entanglements (e.g., having to fly to Country A to check on my investment too often). No, in that there is no "liquid market" in such investment opportunities. That is, I can't just say "Send me your plans and how much money you want." I might consider partly funding a venture by people well-known to me, but, so far, no such possibilities have presented themselves. >In the mean time, people may have to exist in cyberspace (like >www.taxbomber.com) without having a totally secure physical location. >This is not the end of the world, or really even that painful. If done >right you could be down for only an hour - just long enough for >nameservers to change. Taxbomber is now setup to do it very fast next >time, if the need ever comes. Tim, I think you have even advocated this >approach, not stressing the physical location, just the cyberspace >location. No? Yes, I agree. I actually wrote my "Crypto Anarchist Manifesto" in mid-1988, just a month or so before reading Sterling's "Islands in the Net," which was focussed on physical data havens (he may've been the one to coin the term, actually). My thinking was already heavily influenced by Vinge's "True Names," and Chaum's work on untraceable digital cash (1985) was well-known to me (for reasons I've written about elsewhere), so I tended to view data havens as not being tied to physical communities where the local potentates could revoke work permits, visas, travel permits, business licenses, etc. The Anguilla Experiment is certainly not changing this opinion. (And Stephenson's "Snow Crash." in 1992, further popularized this vision of cyberspace havens....I can't say he devised any new forms that some of us hadn't already been thinking about, but he sure did make it a more vivid vision through his evocative fiction.) What the form of these "cyberspace data havens" might take is unclear. Several pieces of technology are missing, just as they were missing four years ago when one of the early list members contacted me to tell me how easy it would be to set up a data haven with computers. (It wasn't easy then, and it ain't easy now. The pieces that are missing are the reifications of protocols we talk about a lot....mere encryption and authentication are only the starting points, and look at how hard it's been just to get _them_ deployed.) --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: National Socio-Economic Security Need for Encryption Technology
by Bart Croughs 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Joel Morgan wrote: >It seems clear that capital investment in tools will contribute to the -productivity- of workers. (Tools here meaning whatever machinery/ infrastructure is used to get work done.) Bart Croughs quotes a number of economists who seem to be saying that when capital investment leads to increased productivity (per worker) this also leads to higher wages. I'm not sure I understand -why- this should necessarily be so. It's my impression that in manufacturing industries, the more mechanized production is, the more workers will get paid. Then again, perhaps a more mechanized industry will pay more because more mechanized industries hire workers with higher skills (albeit fewer workers). It's my impression that when a company makes capital investments which increase productivity, the fruits of this increased worker productivity are shared (to some extent) with the workers. I can imagine a number of reasons why this might be done, but it's not absolutely clear to me that this would be a direct result of market forces.< Increased productivity of workers leads to higher wages for workers because of competition between employers. If a worker produces the worth of $3000 per month for his boss, and his boss is only willing to give him $2000 salary, then there are other employers who would be happy to give this man a job at a higher wage. They still profit if they give him a wage of $2100 instead of $2000. This process goes on until the salary of the worker equals his marginal productivity. Bart Croughs

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Re: National Socio-Economic Security Need for Encryption Technology
by Bart Croughs 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Arun Mehta wrote: >>Bart Croughs wrote: >I don't assume that the *total amount* of capital will be lowered in the US when US capital moves abroad. I assume that the amount of capital in the US will be *relatively lower*. So the wages will be *relatively* lower (lower than when the capital wouldn't have left the US), but not necessarily lower in any absolute sense. I thought this was obvious, but since Arun Mehta also misunderstood me, maybe I should have been more explicit here. > Henry Hazlitt in 'economics in one lesson' (p. 139): "The best way to raise wages, therefore, is to raise marginal labor productivity. This can be done by many methods: by an increase in capital accumulation - i.e. by an increase in the machines with which the workers are aided..." Pardon me, but I'm still confused. When Hazlitt talks about how many machines are employed, surely that's "absolute" capital, not relative. If US capital is invested abroad sensibly, such that it enriches the investors, they have more money to invest in machines at home and thereby increase local productivity (and wages). << If investors use their capital to invest abroad, this capital cannot at the same time be used to invest at home. Only after the investors decide not to invest abroad any more, they can invest it at home. But I was not talking about investors who decide to stop investing abroad and start investing at home. I was talking about investors who decide to invest abroad instead of at home, and the effect of such a decision on the wages in the US. Maybe in the future these investors will have more money, and will decide to stop investing abroad and start investing at home. But in the mean time, all the capital that's invested abroad diminishes the amount of capital invested at home, and so causes the wages at home to be less than they otherwise would have been (but not necessarily less in any absolute sense). Bart Croughs

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re: National Socio-Economic Security Need for Encryption Technology
by Arun Mehta 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:33 13/08/96 -0700, James A. Donald wrote: >the fact that an engineer who is subject to the power of the Indian >government is not worth very much, as is demonstrated by the fact >that companies with Indian engineering teams often spend a lot of money >to get their employees out of India. > >Demand for Indian programmers is less than supply not because capital >has somehow failed to flow to India, but because an engineer in India >is not free to produce the value that engineers elsewhere are free >to produce. > Whoa! In economies that are highly de-coupled, incomes and prices can easily find quite different equilibria. Of course, the situation changes when trade increases. If you visited Italy in the mid-'70s, prices were much lower than, say, in Germany. Somewhere in the late '70s and early '80s, prices (and I hope wages too) rose to "international" levels. Why hasn't it happened in India? One reason for sure is that despite all the talk of free trade, free movement of people does not take place. Otherwise, plumbing, gardening, and all kinds of services could have been provided in Western countries by Indians, reducing supply and raising wages in India. It really doesn't have much to do with "the power of the Indian government" (except that I wish they had negotiated better at GATT so that when the free flow of goods was talked about, the flow of services was also treated at par). India has its faults, but it still is a relatively democratic and free country. And yes, capital has "somehow failed to flow to India," and for this the restrictive policies of government are to blame. Arun Mehta Phone +91-11-6841172, 6849103 amehta(a)cpsr.org http://www.cerfnet.com/~amehta/ finger amehta(a)cerfnet.com for public key

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Re: [NOISE] Re: photographed license plates
by Arun Mehta 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 16:04 13/08/96 -0800, Jim McCoy wrote: >Here in the states the easy challenge to >such a ticket would be "it was not me driving when that photo was taken" and >the burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove that you were the driver. In Germany, as I recall, if you use this argument, the cops require you to thereafter maintain a log of who drives the car when. Arun Mehta Phone +91-11-6841172, 6849103 amehta(a)cpsr.org http://www.cerfnet.com/~amehta/ finger amehta(a)cerfnet.com for public key

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