- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

CDR: Re: ecash, cut & choose and private credentials (Re: Jim Bell)
by Ben Laurie 30 Nov '00

30 Nov '00

Apologies for indirect routing :-) > Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 22:41:07 -0500 > From: Adam Back <adam(a)cypherspace.org> > To: cypherpunks(a)cyberpass.net > > Unfortunately both Brands' and Chaum's ecash and credential schemes > are patented. David Wagner et al also had some ideas about an ecash > coin [3] composed roughly of a public key based MAC (ie the user can't > verify the validity of the coin directly -- only the bank can do > that), plus a zero-knowledge proof that the bank hasn't marked the > coin. This may be unpatened in that it's not directly a certificate, > it's a MAC, plus a zero-knowledge proof so it seems like a fairly > different process. I don't think you can do efficient offline ecash > with Wagner et al's mechanism -- I'd guess it's more comparable with > the functionality offered by Chaum's blind signature. I'm not sure what you think the requirements for "efficient offline ecash" are, but I should note that the double-blinded version of lucre doesn't require the ZKP, and there's also a non-interactive variant of the ZKP for the single-blinded variant. They are both described in the current version of the paper (at least, I'm sure the first as, and somewhat sure the second is). Cheers, Ben. > [3] Ben Laurie has a paper describing Wagner et al's MAC + ZKP ecash / > credential protocol as theory2.pdf. > > http://anoncvs.aldigital.co.uk/lucre/ > > Adam > > Disclaimer: As always my comments are my own. > > --- end forwarded text > > -- > ----------------- > R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> > The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> > 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA > "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, > [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to > experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' -- http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html "There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit." - Robert Woodruff

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30 Nov '00

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CDR: Judge Backs Anonymous 4 in Case
by anonymous＠openpgp.net 30 Nov '00

30 Nov '00

JJJJJMORRISTOWN, N.J.--A Superior Court judge has refused to unmask four individuals who posted anonymous online messages about a software company. JJJJJDendrite International, based in Morristown, wanted the judge to publicly identify the Internet users, who it says revealed company secrets and committed libel against Dendrite. JJJJJSuperior Court Judge Kenneth C. MacKenzie on Tuesday sided with the defendants. JJJJJIn the lawsuit, filed in May, Dendrite alleged false statements about the company were made by three of the defendants, and that two who identified themselves as company employees violated their contracts to not criticize the company. JJJJJDendrite requested that Internet portal Yahoo! release the names of the four, identified in court papers as "ajcazz," "gacbar," "xxplrr" and "implementor extrodinaire." JJJJJ"By setting forth strict evidentiary standards for compelled identification, and then showing that these standards can produce real protection for anonymity, this decision is a tremendous victory for free speech," said Paul Levy, an attorney with Public Citizen, the consumer advocacy group founded by Ralph Nader, which intervened in the case on behalf of the defendants. JJJJJDendrite referred inquiries to their Los Angeles-based lawyer, Robert Bonner, who did not immediately return a telephone message from The Associated Press seeking comment.

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CDR: Imagine
by No User 30 Nov '00

30 Nov '00

A history professor from Uppsala Universitet in Sweden, called to tell me about this article she had read in which a Zimbabwe politician was quoted as saying that children should study this event closely for it shows that election fraud is not only a Third World phenomena. 1. Imagine that we read of an election occurring anywhere in the third world in which the self declared winner was the son of the former prime minister and that former prime minister was himself the former head of that nation's secret police (CIA). 2. Imagine that the self declared winner lost the popular vote but won based on some old colonial holdover (electoral college) from the nation's pre-democracy past. 3. Imagine that the self-declared winner's 'victory' turned on disputed votes cast in a province governed by his brother! 4. Imagine that the poorly drafted ballots of one district, a district heavily favoring the self-declared winner's opponent, led thousands of voters to vote for the wrong candidate. 5. Imagine that that members of that nation's most despised caste, fearing for their lives/livelihoods, turned out in record numbers to vote in near-universal opposition to the self-declared winner's candidacy. 6. Imagine that hundreds of members of that most-despised caste were intercepted on their way to the polls by state police operating under the authority of the self-declared winner's brother. 7. Imagine that six million people voted in the disputed province and that the self-declared winner's 'lead' was only 327 votes. Fewer, certainly, than the vote counting machines' margin of error. 8. Imagine that the self-declared winner and his political party opposed a more careful by-hand inspection and re-counting of the ballots in the disputed province or in its most hotly disputed district. 9. Imagine that the self-declared winner, himself a governor of a major province, had the worst human rights record of any province in his nation and actually led the nation in executions. 10. Imagine that a major campaign promise of the self-declared winner was to appoint like-minded human rights violators to lifetime positions on the high court of that nation. None of us would deem such an election to be representative of anything other than the self-declared winner's will-to-power. All of us, I imagine, would wearily turn the page thinking that it was another sad tale of pitiful pre- or anti-democracy peoples in some strange elsewhere."

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CDR: RE: Survey meters.
by McMeikan, Andrew 29 Nov '00

29 Nov '00

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I think the simplest is probably true, they genuinely are after something, they do a quick web search and a mass mail out to all matches. I got this one which I can only attribute to the <<TUNNEL CONNECTION BETWEEN DIVING TANK AND DEEP DIVING SIMULATOR IN CHINA-DSIGN & BUILD PROJECT>> above method. (included for entertainment value) It is probably hard for people in some countries to get their hands on certain equipment and thus end up resorting to Spam. A 'sting' operation would be one where the only response would be one that confirmed guilt, I think these are just mis-directed pleas for help, when they should be doing a little more research and approaching only those that can help. The paranoid side of me notes a certain similarity in style (has anyone else received emails like these?) cya, Andrew... - -----Original Message----- From: Ken Brown [SMTP:k.brown@ccs.bbk.ac.uk] Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2000 10:19 PM To: Anis Ahmed Sheikh Cc: cypherpunks Subject: Re: Survey meters. I was 99% sure that these posts were some sort of spam-scam, whose purpose I didn't quite get. (Am I falling for it by replying?) And about 1% doubtful that it might be a genuine company who had somehow been tricked into sending mail to toad. In which case, if you are reading this, know that your mail got sent to an obsolete gateway to a discussion list on the political and economic effects of new communication technologies & cryptography and we don't now anything about scintillation meters (I haven't used one since September). But what if, just what if, it is some crazy snoop trying to fish for illegal arms dealers? Are they that crass? Are they that imaginative? Do they really have that much time and money to play with? Are these the sort of people who have been so successful in getting Iraq to disarm? (if there are any intelligence agents reading this, that last bit was an example of "irony". This paragraph is "sarcasm". You need to know about those things to decode communications between civilians. Look it up in the handbook. It will be in the exam.) Ken -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.8 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com> iQA/AwUBOiVYLUAhpS53eUNhEQK7DwCfVjs+d5NGpNzEWN9unTi2Lux7XAQAoJVF Umcm2oe2jMSTnVGl/ExVB+jC =Meho -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- = --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The information transmitted is intended for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination, copying or other use of, or taking any action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you have received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from your system. Utility Services Corporation (USC) is not responsible for any changes made to the material other than those made by USC or for the effect of the changes on the meaning of the material.

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CDR: Updated..
by optin-mailer＠goodsexguide.com 29 Nov '00

29 Nov '00

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CDR: Save 15% plus FREE SHIPPING
by shop.From-us 29 Nov '00

29 Nov '00

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CDR: Re: Authenticate the "adult field", go to jail...
by R. A. Hettinga 29 Nov '00

29 Nov '00

At 10:16 AM -0800 on 11/29/00, obvious(a)beta.freedom.net wrote: > Are you kidding? These people just did the credit card verifications. > They'd be in just as much trouble if they provided bearer credential > services. I don't think you understand how bearer credentials would work. With blinded bearer credentials, prosecutors wouldn't have much of a leg to stand on, since the authenticator is only validating the *existence*, or not, of a blinded age credential. With bearer credentials, authenticated in exchange, of course, for cash :-), the authenticator of those credentials has no idea *who* is asking for that proof of age. There's no direct sales contact with any particular content vendor. Validation of age would probably be done in somekind of graded auction market, anyway. >> Thomas Reedy, 37, and his wife, Janice Reedy, 32, of Fort Worth, are >> accused in an 87-count indictment of providing access to several child-porn >> Internet sites by verifying subscribers' credit cards and assigning them >> passwords. >> >> The Reedys maintain that they did not know that some of the pornographic >> sites they provided access to contained illegal child pornography. > > In fact if anything this kind of prosecution is an argument *against* > getting into the ecash/ecredential business, especially if it is focused > on porn as some have proposed. All you need is for someone to use it > to sell or authorize access to kiddie porn, and you're going to jail. It would be interesting to see this tested in court. There is sizeable legal precedent for the issuers of bearer cash, say a nation-state, not being held liable for purchases using that cash. The same could be said for issuers of bearer credentials. Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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CDR: Re: Authenticate the "adult field", go to jail...
by obvious＠beta.freedom.net 29 Nov '00

29 Nov '00

The point is, RAH claimed that selling adult verification services using bearer credentials would be safe because, get this, the porn merchants would pay the verification service using anonymous ecash! First, there is no ecash and so this isn't a reasonable first step towards getting bearer credentials established and in use. Second, the supposed safety and blindness to the evilness of the business partners is solely due to the ecash. The verification service could use simple credit card numbers and passwords exactly as is done today, and still get all the benefits of deniability with regard to knowledge of the evil wares being sold. It is the ecash which provides the blindness on that side. Blinding the customers doesn't help at all in that regard. So RAH was doubly wrong to imply that bearer credentials would have helped out in this case where an age verification service is being prosecuted because one of their clients is selling kiddy porn. And if you can think outside the cypherpunk box for a minute, maybe this will shed a little light on why the MTB didn't get into bed with pornographers. If RAH thinks he can con people into building a business on this model he better think again. Obvious. ________________________________________________________________________ Total Internet Privacy -- get your Freedom Nym at http://www.freedom.net

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CDR: Survey meters.
by Anis Ahmed Sheikh 29 Nov '00

29 Nov '00

Dear Sir, We request to draw your kind attention that we are one of the feading importers of Pakistan.We belive in planed and organised sale promotion through trained field staffs,preferably where we have sole agencies. Our business is of scientific & laboratory equipments,electric & electronic measuring equipments,agriculture equipments, NUCLEAR INSTRUMENTS and educational instruments . We are great intrested to enhanse business deal with your esteemed firm if we could get encouragement and coopration from your side. At present we are deeply intrested in SURVEY METERS , as we have received a tender enquiry from government department{NIAB FAISALABAD} whose last date is 14-12-2000 , the specification are given bellow:- i. Survey Meters, G.M.Sintilation detector, Threshold: 30MV +/- 10mV Meter dial: 0-2mT/hr and multiplier[X01,X1, X10,X100] (OR EQUIVALENT ANY MODELS) We know that you are one of few biggest manufacturers of the world,so that your are requested to plese inform us the prices on FAX or E.Mail and despatch us original brochures/litratures/leaflets of all type of above cited items by POST MAIL for our customers and endusers. We also request you to please despatch us your latest general catalogue comprehensive leaflets of all of your products those are under your export programme with latest pricelist and discount schedule, after rceving the litratures we can be able to creat the demand of your products through out Pakistan. Thanking and hoping to receive your earliest reply in this regards with best wishes. Best Regards. Anis Ahmad Sheikh(M.Sc Physics) Managing Director. Mailing/Postal address:- G.R.A. TRADING COMPANY, 13-ABKARI ROAD (ANARKALI) LAHORE-54000 PAKISTAN. PH; +92-42-7321688/7240189 FAX: +92-42 724 8358 E.MAIL gra(a)lhr.paknet.com.pk.

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