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The Word Spy for 05/01/2003 -- ethnomathematics
by R. A. Hettinga 01 May '03

01 May '03

--- begin forwarded text

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Re: Quarantines may be justified
by Jim Choate 01 May '03

01 May '03

You know, I keep thinking you've said the stupidest thing ever. And then you say something else. On Wed, 30 Apr 2003, Sunder wrote: > Then, by extension, I find that when people say "libertarians" in quotes > like you said, but not like I said, is no different than having them > assult me with their fists. > > In fact, I find such behavior as direct threats against my life, and > instilling terror, so that makes you a terrorist, and possibly an Arab > because in my experience, people who put libertarians in menacing quotes > like you do were mostly Arabs who hate our freedoms, and that's why they > bombed the World Trade Center, and therefore must be harboring WMD's -- > and they probably got a huge stash of oil we can grab too - I mean, are > torturing their subjects and are anti-freedom, and hate the American Way > of Life (Wave Flag Here!) > > > Should we really be able to make up our own definitions and turn things > which merely annoy us into crimes? Think about it a bit longer before > you reply again. -- ____________________________________________________________________ We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space" ravage(a)ssz.com jchoate(a)open-forge.org www.ssz.com www.open-forge.org --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Mike Hawash
by Tyler Durden 01 May '03

01 May '03

Neil Johnson wrote... "An "source" claims he/she "thought" he saw someone "maybe" fitting hawash's description "maybe" talking with the other guys at the hotel in China." Do you know where in China the hotel was? I'm assuming it was out by Afghanistan, in which case Hawash looked like practically everybody there: Western Xinjiang province is very Muslim (Tajiks, Uzbeks, Uigurs), with not too many Chinese (well, no Han Chinese...there may be some Hui Moslems out that far west). Half of the guys there will look like the Hawash picture they're floating these days (yeah, the one where he's wearing a beard and looking real scary...). FYI...the largest Mosque in the world is actually located in that area (Urumqi, maybe? Tashkent? I can't remember...) In other words, that's exceedingly flimsy evidence. -TD >From: Neil Johnson <njohnsn(a)njohnsn.com> >To: cypherpunks(a)lne.com >Subject: Re: Mike Hawash >Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 06:21:50 -0500 > >I read the compliant. It is only 43 pages. > >Here's what I gathered. > >It was a quick read, and I fully expect and welcome comments, corrections, >and >opinions. > >Of course mixed between these claims is a bunch of stuff about the >activities >of the "Portland Six", but other than the few assertions below, there is no >direct evidence that Hawash committed any of the acts that the "Portland >Six" >did. > >Hawash - bought a parka and a backpack at REI. (ooooh, ominous). > >Hawash filed a quit claim transferring his house into his wife's name. > >(My dad, a consulting civil engineer, had the deed of our house put solely >in >my mother's name to protect against losing the house in a liability suit. >Hawash could have done it just because he was leaving the country and >didn't >want any issues in case of airplane accident, kidnapping, etc.) > >Hawash had his wife open a bank account in her name only and transferred >$5K >to it. > >($5K ?, Later they document that Hawash made around $320K in 2001, and >$180K >in 2002. Yeah, she could start a new life on that.) > >Hawash flew to China and returned to the US on exactly the same dates as >the >other guys. > >Hawash appears to have stayed in the same building as the other guys. >His and the other guy's lodging was in the same building, but different >hotels, and the hotel that Hawash had reservations to stay at doesn't have >a >record of him being there. > >(Okay, even this does look suspicious to me, but it's definitely seems a >little less than "beyond a reasonable doubt".) > >An "source" claims he/she "thought" he saw someone "maybe" fitting hawash's >description "maybe" talking with the other guys at the hotel in China. > >In searchs of the other guys houses, they found that one of the other guys >had >a business card with Hawash's phone number on it. Some of the other guys >had >Hawash's phone number also. > >One guy mowed Hawash's lawn. Hawash wrote a check for $105 to the guy that >mowed Hawash's lawn. > >The all attended the same Mosque in CA. > >"Neighbors" reported to the FBI that Hawash became withdrawn after the >September 11th attacks, changed his clothing style (From "Western" to >"Eastern"), grew a beard, and starting attending the mosque more regularly. > >(Gee, I saw a lot of press reports about an upsurge of people in the US >taking >their religious convictions more seriously and attending church more >regularly after the Sept 11th attacks, are they potential terrorists too >?). > >Hawash told others that he was going to China to pursue clients for his >software consulting practice. However, his home phone and cell-phone >records >show he made no phone calls to China in advance of his trip. > >(Hmmm, "negative evidence", that's a good one. Hellooooo, ever heard of >e-mail, snail-mail, or communication via intermediaries ?) > >Therefore, he MUST be guilty of conspiracy. > >Even the LE admits that they showed some pictures to one their "sources", >and >He/She didn't recognize Hawash's picture as being one of the "other guys". > >Be afraid. VERY afraid. > >-- >Neil Johnson >http://www.njohnsn.com >PGP key available on request. _________________________________________________________________ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

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Re: Thanks for the living hell, and question about OpenSSL
by Patrick Chkoreff 01 May '03

01 May '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Tim May wrote: > Not meaning to sound too harsh, but you need to think deeply about what > cryptography is all about and why "trust me, I promise not to look" > systems are not desirable or interesting. I'm writing "(unblind (sign (blind X))) = (sign x)" on the board one hundred times. - -- Patrick http://fexl.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0 iQA/AwUBPqm3I1A7g7bodUwLEQLBtQCgxyXbUvKDtgfIM1yPdpy1CuynegMAnjWd NDt1h4fmiu1OBreIZdrc8CnV =deYX -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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text analysis
by Major Variola (ret) 01 May '03

01 May '03

FWIW: There's a paragraph in the current _Science_ that mentions "Winnow", a program by some .il researchers that guesses the sex of authors by their writing. They claim 80% accuracy on general lit and 74% accuracy on 30 science papers. (Of course that's over a baseline of 50%...)

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[speak-freely] SpeakFreely ParanoidPatch - update (fwd)
by Thomas Shaddack 01 May '03

01 May '03

The best way to celebrate the International Workers Day is work. Enjoy its fruit. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 1 May 2003 07:41:15 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [speak-freely] SpeakFreely ParanoidPatch - update From: Thomas Shaddack <speakfreely(a)shaddack.mauriceward.com> To: speak-freely(a)fourmilab.ch New changes in my higher-security SpeakFreely patch for Linux. Location: http://213.246.91.154/patches/speakfreely/ Purpose: To make it more difficult for any adversaries (hackers, spies, hostile governments, forensic experts, Thinkpol, ...) to recover keys used in SpeakFreely communication. Keep in mind that current technologies allow capturing the entire encrypted conversation, storing it for unlimited time, and decrypting it later, after seizing the machine used as the endpoint and recovering the key stored there. Particularly important for high-tech high-surveillance low-freedom countries. News: SpeakFreely version 7.6a/Linux fully supported. Maintenance of the patch for version 7.5 abandoned. Option for locking memory against being swapped; useful for both preventing leakage of the keys to swap file, and for increasing performance in high-swapping low-memory situations. Possibility to read encryption keys from stdin; another process then can do the key handshake with the other side, then run sfspeaker and sfmike and feed them with the negotiated session key - possibly with different key for each direction. -H option, a more usual alias to -U (--help is now supported too). A little change, but convenient. Patches for manpages, so the new options are described there. Name sfParanoidPatch assigned to the project. In the older version (1.0): Support for reading key from a file Overwriting the key value if specified as a parameter, making it invisible for 'ps -ef' Support for executing a command immediately after running sfmike, eg. for unmounting encrypted loop from where the key was read Support for running under a specified UID and GID and in chroot jail, if launched as root; provides additional security hardening. Enjoy! :) * * * To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send E-mail containing the word "unsubscribe" in the message body (*not* as the Subject) to speak-freely-request(a)fourmilab.ch

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Re: Making Money in Digital Money
by zem 01 May '03

01 May '03

Dave Emery wrote: > But Mallet can just strip her signature and substitute his > and build up a reputation as a quality editor without doing any work. > Nobody needs HER signature if his judgements/filtering are just as > good.... Yes, but: If Alice's editorial approval is valuable, Mallet won't be the only one emulating her output - he'll be competing with many other emulators. Each of those emulators subscribes to (and pays for) Alice's service. Alice controls supply - and hence her emulators' reputations. She can charge higher rates for better service - faster, or with more coverage. She can deliberately degrade the quality or timeliness of a selected customer's service, if she figures out he's a Mallet - damaging her reputation in the process, but perhaps hurting his more. All the little Mallets have to pay Alice's top rates if they want to match her reputation. They can't afford to get their stuff from another Mallet, if they want to keep up, because then _he_ controls their supply. The value of Mallet's reputation can approach that of Alice, but - as long as there's a nanosecond's delay between her output and his - never quite reach it. Any of the tricks Mallet can use to increase his reputation (emulating multiple Editors, for example) are also available to Alice. Highly competitive, yes - but the money flows upstream. You can watch this happening right now, albeit without the crypto and cash: weblogs. Substitute 'link to content' for 'signature', and 'link to weblog' for 'payment', and the process is the same. Notice how 'payments' aren't evenly distributed? There's a reason for that. And it's not guns. -- mailto:zem@vigilant.tv F289 2BDB 1DA0 F4C4 DC87 EC36 B2E3 4E75 C853 FD93 http://vigilant.tv/ "..I'm invisible, I'm invisible, I'm invisible.."

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Re: Making Money in Digital Money
by Major Variola (ret) 01 May '03

01 May '03

At 12:09 AM 5/1/03 -0400, zem wrote: >> So Bob either redistributes the decrypted bits, or cruises through >> the analog hole. Game over. All your Valentis are belong to us. > >Point is Bob can't redistribute the file with Alice's approval rating >still intact. And it's the approval rating that people are paying her >for, not the content. Bob can't redistribute the profitable part, only >the worthless part. Who gives a rat's ass about Alice's rating? The mass of P2P clients will rate the content. Its already in practice. All one needs is the content, the rating system will handle itself.

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Re: Making Money in Digital Money
by zem 01 May '03

01 May '03

> Not so. What stops editors' output to be re-distributed at zero cost ? Editor produces output in the form of signatures that indicate approval of content. Editor encrypts content to customers' public key before signing it. Customer can't redistribute Editor's signature in a form that's useful to anyone else without also distributing his own secret key. Hence, re-distributing Editor's output is at the cost of revealing one's own secret key (which will have financial consequences if Editor arranges the deal correctly). There are probably neater ways of achieving the same result. -- mailto:zem@vigilant.tv F289 2BDB 1DA0 F4C4 DC87 EC36 B2E3 4E75 C853 FD93 http://vigilant.tv/ "..I'm invisible, I'm invisible, I'm invisible.."

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Re: Making Money in Digital Money
by Major Variola (ret) 01 May '03

01 May '03

At 10:48 PM 4/30/03 -0400, zem wrote: >You're assuming that resellers add zero value to the content. They can >make a profit by providing some service over and above the content itself. You are referring to the value of Editors. Yep, they have value. Its all reputations. Some will pay for reputable editors' filtering. Its a valid bizmodel. >Take file sharing networks as an example. Current networks are flooded >with bogus, incomplete or poor quality files. Not quite, empirically speaking. And mature P2P users simply obtain the largest file that claims to be the desired content. Also, there is near-zero cost in downloading multiple copies. See also K*Zaa's (albeit ill-used) rating system. A nym could build a >reputation as a validating service - a critic, if you like. Perhaps >something like this: Bingo. While retaining meatspace anonymity. You *are* your public keys. Note plural. See Vinge, Verner, _True Names_ (and thanks for the recent posted link to that text, although I found the illustrations superfluous) >Alice the music critic buys copies of new content at relatively high >prices from the creator, or close sources. When Bob requests a copy of >a particular file, Alice encrypts it to Bob's public key and signs the >encrypted copy, selling him this 'reviewed' copy for reproduction cost + >profit. Bob can verify he's received a good copy, but he can't >redistribute Alice's reviewed version without revealing his secret key. So Bob either redistributes the decrypted bits, or cruises through the analog hole. Game over. All your Valentis are belong to us. ------ "Yes, we know they have logic analyzers in Hong Kong" ---A senior Sony Engineer, admitting defeat, in a private meeting.

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