- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

under pressure from University Computing svcs,
by hfinney＠shell.portal.com 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

From: The Phantom <phantom(a)u.washington.edu> > I'm going to have to shut down the phantom remailer. > > Seems someone complained about a remailed message. I got a copy of the > message, and it didn't seem to bad to me, but I've gotta go with what UCS > says. > > As of today, the phantom remailer (phantom@mead) is hereby out of service. > > Matt It's too bad that this remailer is being shut down. I posted a few days ago about this problem, and someone asked if there had been any specific examples of shutdowns. Here is one; I know Matt's is not the first. If it would help, Matt, I could provide you with code to act as a "second- tier" remailer, one which would only forward to one of the other Cypherpunks remailers. No person would receive messages from your remailer, hence there would be no complaints to your administration. Your remailer would just be an extra "entry port" into the Cypherpunks remailer system. I don't know whether the terms of the shutdown of your remailer would allow you to experiment with what is arguably a different piece of code, one which would not lead to complaints. Hal Finney hfinney(a)shell.portal.com

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Re: Chaos harnessed for encryption / Fluctuations and Or
by fnerd＠smds.com 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

gtoal(a)gtoal.com sez- > That was smoke and mirrors by people who understand chaos better than > they understand encryption. All it boils down to is a synchronised > pair of (not very good) PRNGs. > ... > Forget it. It's a dead end. What it is is PRNGs that can synchronize without publishing their states. If this could be done with strong PRNGs, you'd have something. -fnerd quote me

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RE:patent on remote cash transactions?
by nobody＠alumni.cco.caltech.edu 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

THE MOUSE THAT ROARED. A small company has received a big patent covering financial transactions from home computers. While industry giants have bickered over who's on first in home banking, shopping, entertainment, etc., Online Resources & Communications Corporation of Fairfax, Va., has received what appears to be an enormously broad patent covering financial transactions made from home computers. "The patented payment process potentially applies to a wide range of nonbanking services, from pay-per-view television to stock trading done from home terminals." (New York Times 8/9/93 C2)

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Re: Secure voice software issues
by jim＠tadpole.com 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

V.42 adds about 200ms to my slip link. I'd rather do without it, thanks.

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Re: [uk.transport] Speed Camera with OCR
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

Rick Tait, R.Tait(a)bnr.co.uk, reports Marcus Reynold's note that there's a new > > speed trap in Kent. Apparently the radar clocks your speed, a TV camera > > records your number plate & then a real time OCR system picks out the > > actual number & flashes it up on a digital display a short distance > > further up the road. [...] > > The ability to read a car's plate & decypher the number in real time > > without any human intervention must take a bit of work. There's a lot of automated-highway research going on; most of it has been oriented towards radio+smartcards, which are easy to make accurate, and while they're not totally cheap, you can palm off much of the cost on the car-owner and use cheap equipment in the tollbooth. License-plate reading in real time is tough, if you're trying to get both speed and accuracy from a video image of a moving car; our neural-net folks were looking into it about three years ago, and it seemed like they'd be pretty good at it if they could get a bit more funding:-) ; they've mainly been concentrating on envelope-readers for Post Offices and railroad-car identifiers. Embarrassing speeders is a special case, because the accuracy doesn't really have to be 100% - you catch the cars on video, so if you decide to prosecute anybody, you can have a human read the picture and verify that you had the right license plate number. Meanwhile, back on the road, if your computer misidentifies the speeding driver half the time, he may assume the speed trap was nicking the other fast car next to him, and you've scared a lot of other drivers into slowing down because it *looks* like you've could have nicked them; so you've accomplished the safety objective. It's scary stuff, because the technology is mostly there, and a government that wanted to pay for development could get it done by a number of research companies. If it's too expensive for widespread use now, computer horsepower keeps getting cheaper every year, especially when what you need is DSP-crunchers and gate-arrays for neural nets, rather than general-purpose systems. Meanwhile, the smartcard people are mostly not using digicash, they're using no-privacy systems and appealing to the convenience for the commercial driver, whose company probably doesn't object. Dave Mandl comments: > Hmmm...most drivers I've known would be thrilled to get off with just > "embarrassment." In fact, they'd probably be proud to have it broadcast > to everyone else on the road (except the lawmen, naturally) that they'd > just been clocked at 110 MPH or whatever. A number of years ago, Ohio tried a system that displayed your speed (but not your license plate) as you went by - they quickly discovered that they had to cut off the display at something like 80 or 85 MPH to prevent just that effect (though adding the license plate number would cut down on the exhibitionism a bit.) Bill Stewart

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Re: [uk.transport] Speed Camera with OCR
by dmandl＠lehman.com 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

> From: R.Tait(a)bnr.co.uk > I have just seen an item on the the BBC South East News about a new > speed trap in Kent. Apparently the radar clocks your speed, a TV camera > records your number plate & then a real time OCR system picks out the > actual number & flashes it up on a digital display a short distance > further up the road. The idea is to embarrass drivers by letting them > & others see their speed & registration. I don't know what type of > equipment they are using, but it sounds like a really neat trick. > The ability to read a car's plate & decypher the number in real time > without any human intervention must take a bit of work. Has anybody > heard how reliable this system really is ? Hmmm...most drivers I've known would be thrilled to get off with just "embarrassment." In fact, they'd probably be proud to have it broadcast to everyone else on the road (except the lawmen, naturally) that they'd just been clocked at 110 MPH or whatever. But somehow, I doubt that this data is used only for embarrassment, don't you? --Dave.

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[uk.transport] Speed Camera with OCR
by R.Tait＠bnr.co.uk 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

I thought this might be of interest to fellow cypherpunks, especially to those of us in the UK. Has anything like this been done in the US or Canada? -Rick ------- Start of forwarded message ------- Newsgroups: uk.transport From: mreyno(a)sound.demon.co.uk (Marcus Reynolds) Subject: Speed Camera with OCR Reply-To: mreyno(a)sound.demon.co.uk Distribution: world X-Mailer: cppnews $Revision: 1.20 $ Organization: Sound & Vision BBS +44 (0)932 252323 Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1993 20:34:43 +0000 I have just seen an item on the the BBC South East News about a new speed trap in Kent. Apparently the radar clocks your speed, a TV camera records your number plate & then a real time OCR system picks out the actual number & flashes it up on a digital display a short distance further up the road. The idea is to embarrass drivers by letting them & others see their speed & registration. I don't know what type of equipment they are using, but it sounds like a really neat trick. The ability to read a car's plate & decypher the number in real time without any human intervention must take a bit of work. Has anybody heard how reliable this system really is ? I can see a few more uses for such a system than merely embarrassing speeding motorists, if it can work reliably & cheaply. How's this for starters:- City centre entry control & road pricing without the fancy toll booths, just an itemised bill at the end of the month. Tracking stolen vehicles, check every plate against the DVLC wanted list. Tracking any vehicle the State wants to track. Hello Big Brother. -- Marcus Reynolds (Bandwidth saving sig) ------- End of forwarded message -------

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Physical Privacy
by Duncan Frissell 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com W >This might be a step away from 'cypher' W >topics, but, Duncan, I was W >curious as to wether you publish any manuals W >on privacy, and/or can W >suggest books or sources for privacy and W >financial privacy info. Cypherpunks is dedicated to digital privacy. One cannot practice digital privacy without an understanding of physical privacy techniques (and vice-versa these days). Shameless marketing propoaganda will be sent by Email. Duncan Frissell "Privacy is a type of information that has its polarity reversed; I imagine it as anti-information. In a world where everything is connected to everything -- where connection and information and knowledge are dirt cheap -- then disconnection and anti-information and no-knowledge become expensive." -- Kevin Kelly But not *too* expensive. Frissell & Associates, custom crafted legal regimes since 1969. --- ~ WinQwk 2.0b#0 ~ Unregistered Evaluation Copy

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Re: Key-Escrow (black) Humor
by George A. Gleason 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

How many government agents does it take to screw in a lightbulb? a1: None, they don't screw. a2: None, they only screw the general public. a3: That question is forbidden under Don't Ask / Don't Tell. -gg

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Privacy and mail-lists
by Duncan Frissell 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com W >This might be a step away from 'cypher' W >topics, but, Duncan, I was W >curious as to wether you publish any manuals W >on privacy, and/or can W >suggest books or sources for privacy and W >financial privacy info. Cypherpunks is dedicated to digital privacy. One cannot practice digital privacy without an understanding of physical privacy techniques (and vice-versa these days). Shameless marketing propoaganda will be sent by Email. Duncan Frissell "Privacy is a type of information that has its polarity reversed; I imagine it as anti-information. In a world where everything is connected to everything -- where connection and information and knowledge are dirt cheap -- then disconnection and anti-information and no-knowledge become expensive." -- Kevin Kelly But not *too* expensive. Frissell & Associates, custom crafted legal regimes since 1969. --- WinQwk 2.0b#0

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