- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

/usr/lib/newsbin/ctl/newgroup: `news@math.fu-berlin.de (Math Department)' tried (fwd)
by Mark Turner 15 Jan '93

15 Jan '93

You may be interested in this recent attempt to create a bogus newsgroup, especially if you've been following recent discussion in sci.crypt. Regards, Mark. According to news(a)dis.demon.co.uk.... > From dis.demon.co.uk!news Fri Jan 15 00:38:27 1993 > To: usenet(a)dis.demon.co.uk > Subject: /usr/lib/newsbin/ctl/newgroup: `news(a)math.fu-berlin.de (Math Department)' tried > Date: Fri, 15 Jan 93 0:33:57 GMT > From: news(a)dis.demon.co.uk > Sender: news(a)dis.demon.co.uk > Message-ID: <9301150033.aa12907(a)dis.demon.co.uk> > > /usr/lib/newsbin/ctl/newgroup: `news(a)math.fu-berlin.de (Math Department)' tried > to create newsgroup `alt.fan.david-sternlight'. > Request was refused: component exceeds 14 characters. > === > Control: newgroup alt.fan.david-sternlight > Newsgroups: alt.fan.david-sternlight.ctl,control > Path: demon!pipex!bnr.co.uk!bnrgate!nott!torn!spool.mu.edu!yale.edu!ira.uka.de!math.fu-berlin.de!lkdfjilu!sternlight.com!nobody > From: dsfc(a)sternlight.org > Subject: newgroup alt.fan.david-sternlight > Message-ID: <rezalevabgib12370(a)sternlight.org> > Sender: news(a)math.fu-berlin.de (Math Department) > Organization: J. Random Site > Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1993 20:14:32 GMT > Approved: news > Lines: 21 > > > one mo' time... > > For your newsgroups file: > alt.fan.david-sternlight David Sternlight, sci.crypt crusader > > > This group is designed for the praise of the wit and wisdom of our > leader, David Sternlight, the man battling the evil use of > cryptography wherever it may lie. > > The group is being created entirely for the use of the David > Sternlight Fanclub, which holds the patent on this newsgroup and would > be forced to sue if anyone else tried to use it. Indeed, we would be > disgusted by the implicit lack of respect for intellectual property. > Also, this newsgroup may not be imported or exported from any eastern > block country in contravention of the ITARs. > > Thank you, > > The David Sternlight Fanclub > === -- /\/\ark Turner Demon Systems / Demon Internet Office: mark(a)demon.co.uk (+44 81 349 0063) 42 Hendon Lane, London Home: mt(a)kram.org (+44 831 823 212) N3 1TT, England ------------------ PGP version 2.0 Public Key available ------------------- *** IP level dial-up connectivity to the Internet for a tenner a month! ***

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Re: possible solution to the anonymous h
by dclunie＠pax.tpa.com.au 15 Jan '93

15 Jan '93

> I thought about this. The major problem is that once the PEM > beta-testing period ends, all keys must be registered with "approved" > (by RSA) central authorities. I highly doubt they'd issue > pseudonymous keys, but maybe they would allow someone to set up a > heirarchy especially for that purpose. I'm not convinced. Who says ? RSA may wish this to happen, but surely anyone who wants to can set up their own key service. david

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Electronic money legality
by Hal 15 Jan '93

15 Jan '93

The question came up here some time ago as to whether it would be legal to issue electronic money, or regular money, for that matter. I got a couple of books out of the library to try to learn something of the history of private bank notes. It seems that private bank notes were the rule rather than the exception in the U.S. up until around the time of the Civil War. However, the notes were issued by banks which generally had a charter or license from the state government. I'm not sure whether a private individual could have legally issued his own banknotes without state permission. Around the time of the Civil War the Federal government levied a 10% tax on all issues of banknotes. This was intended to drive them out of use, and it did. Apparently this tax is still in effect today. George Selgin's book, The Theory of Free Banking, is a call to return to a situation of competitive note issue, where each bank would print its own "money" and people would use all these different monies freely according to their preferences. Regardless of the pros and cons of this idea, he does mention the legal situation briefly in footnote 7 of chapter 11: "Strictly speaking, issue of bank notes by commercial banks is not presently illegal; however, such issue must still meet the bond-deposit requirements established under the National Banking System or the 10 percent tax on state bank notes. Since all bonds eligible as security for circulating notes were retired before 1935 (or had the circulation privilege conferred upon them withdrawn), note issue, while not illegal, is nevertheless impossible under existing law. Restoration of commercial bank note-issuing privileges merely requires repeal of the bond deposit provisions of the original National Banking statutes and of the prohibitive tax on bank notes." One other point I learned was about the nature of "legal tender" laws. If a money is a legal tender, a creditor cannot turn down an offer by a debtor to repay using that money. If he does turn it down, the debt is void (roughly). So, legal tender laws don't forbid repayment of a debt in some other form (I can give you a bike in place of the $100 I owe you), (if we both agree), but they may specify that even if a debt is denominated in some other units, I can repay using federal reserve notes. This is what happened when the U.S. stopped redeemin for gold during the 1930's - long-term contracts had routinely been denominated in gold, but the courts held that dollars could still be used to pay them off. So, legal tender laws don't appear relevant to the use of digital money, except that contracts based on digicash could still be paid off by dollar bills if the debtor wants. Hal Finney 74076.1041(a)compuserve.com

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possible solution to the anonymous harrassment problem
by Marc Horowitz 15 Jan '93

15 Jan '93

(I'm also marc(a)mit.edu. But composing over a 9600 baud line sucks :-) I just had an idea. Assume we have some sort of workable system for anonymous return addresses. What if every message were *required* to have one, and if the remailers verified their correctness (at least as far as we can, given the fakability of net mail)? Then, if someone received harassing email, she could ask the remailer maintainers to find the real name of the sender of a piece of mail. Assuming reasonable remailer maintainers (and we can use positive reputations to decide that), they'd be able to do this. The system has a built-in safety: All the remailer maintainers would have to agree that a message was indeed harassing to the recipient before they would use their private keys to follow the chain back. Unless all the maintainers agreed to trace the message, it would be impossible, and the sender's anonymity would be assured. I'm just trying to think of technical solutions to our societal woes, as hopeless as this may be. Remember, if people were honest, we wouldn't need encryption, either. Sigh. Marc

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Forwarded article.
by whitaker＠eternity.demon.co.uk 15 Jan '93

15 Jan '93

This article was forwarded to you by whitaker(a)demon.co.uk (Russell Earl Whitaker): --------------------------------- cut here ----------------------------- Newsgroups: demon.security Path: eternity.demon.co.uk!demon!visigoth.demon.co.uk!pettsj From: James Petts <pettsj(a)visigoth.demon.co.uk> Subject: Public Key Exchange Message-ID: <C0u8ww.1xD(a)demon.co.uk> X-Xxmessage-Id: <A77AE8E4BD010855(a)visigoth.demon.co.uk> X-Xxdate: Thu, 14 Jan 93 09:54:44 GMT Sender: news(a)demon.co.uk Nntp-Posting-Host: visigoth.demon.co.uk Organization: No Affiliation X-Useragent: Nuntius v1.1.1d13 Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1993 09:55:42 GMT For those who are interested, there is a short article in today's (14/1/93) New Scientist explaining how quantum uncertainties can be used to improve the security of exchanging cryptographic keys. ===> James Petts <=== *** CAUTION - READ THIS .sig AT YOUR OWN RISK! *************************** * * NOTE! VISIGOTH HAS NO * * Q. Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? * CONNECTION WITH ANY * * A. Ja!... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt * OTHER SITE AT * * gersput! * DEMON.CO.UK * * * * ************************************************************************** * pettsj(a)visigoth.demon.co.uk (preferred), pettsj(a)cix.compulink.co.uk * ************************************************************************** --------------------------------- cut here -----------------------------

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Re: anonymous service shutdown (pax)
by dclunie＠pax.tpa.com.au 15 Jan '93

15 Jan '93

I have had a fairly long discussion via email with the AARnnet administrator involved. He points out that wrongly or rightly (he believes wrongly) the AARNet does not have an "open access" policy, and the network is setup exclusively to service the university community. Public access systems are tolerated, but barely, and mainly through the grace of those who administer the system rather than those who fund it. The complaint in question was actually not at all specific, and came not from the NSF but from one of the NASA Internet officers who is responsible for the US end of the link to Australia (and pay for some of it). Essentially the complaint was one of increasing mail traffic on an already congested link to the US, as well as concern about the "hiding people's identities so they cannot be responsible for what they say". Personally I disagree with the second complaint, but cannot dispute the first, without statistsics about what component of the link was being consumed by the posting service. I suspect it was very small but these things all add up. It seems a shame that the anonymous system is being terminated "on principle" but the AARNet person has been friendly about it, in fact positively graceful in view of my somewhat inflammatory post, and so I guess I just have to leave it there. Hopefully eventually commercial vendors will provide an alternative channel to the university-based network here currently, much as has happened in the US over the years, and these questions will be less of a concern. david

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Re: anonymous service shutdown (pax)
by Hal 14 Jan '93

14 Jan '93

to: >internet:cypherpunks@toad.com I agree that the PAX shutdown is an ominous development. Nobody's internet access is perfectly free from the kinds of pressures that were brought against PAX. What steps can we take to keep the same thing from happening to us? I agree with Karl that a big step would be to spread remailers more widely. Eric Hollander is running three remailers in addition to the ones Karl mentioned - hh(a)soda.berkeley.edu, and two other machines which I don't have handy. They don't encrypt but they forward, and that's good enough for many purposes. Some time back, there was mention that the owner of the commercial Portal system would run one. Could someone follow up on that who knows him? PGP is gradually disappearing from U.S. sites where it used to be available. Recently it got taken off the EFF area on Compuserve. We can't afford to see encryption and remailers be slowly strangled. Hal 74076.1041(a)compuserve.com

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No Subject
by wayner＠cs.cornell.edu 14 Jan '93

14 Jan '93

I often find it useful to think about these matters by mapping them over to the real world. Anonymous remailers are really quite common. Here are a few common sources: 1) Academic journals which review papers. These often keep the names of the reviewers and the names of the paper authors hidden to allow people the chnace to speak freely. 2) Newspapers with personals sections offer both anonymous mailboxes and anonymous voiceboxes for obvious reasons. 3) The WSJ also offers these advertisements for executive searches. 4) The Police, in some cities, maintain anonymous tip lines. They also occasionaly offer cash rewards to these anonymous tipsters. I think the NYPD has a anonymity office set up to do just this. I realize that the cypherpunk mailing list likes to cloak itself in the romance of the counter culture, but in moments like this it might make sense to think about how mainstream and suburban and respectable the concept of anonymous mailers can be. In many cases, authority reacts to the perceived threat-- not to the threat itself. -Peter Wayner

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Persecution of anon remailers
by strat＠intercon.com 14 Jan '93

14 Jan '93

Things like this are what organs like Computer Underground Digest, a.k.a CuD, are always crying for. It might not be bad to bounce a message or two to the RISKS Digest as well. The best way to fight this sort of quite strangulation is to bring it out into the light. People are starting to look at the Internet as a nascent version of the next ubiqitous telecommunications technology. If we speak from the stand of "we want to have privacy technology ready for the day the general public gets this technology, and these guys are getting in the way...", then we have an opportunity to get the libraries, researchers, and other current net users up in arms about these developments. Bob Stratton Engineer, InterCon Systems Corp. strat(a)intercon.com +1 703 709 5525

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Re: anonymous service shutdown (pax)
by Marc.Ringuette＠GS80.SP.CS.CMU.EDU 14 Jan '93

14 Jan '93

I think a large stink should be made at this point, to bring our legitimate privacy concerns to the attention of net admins, and to flush out who it was who threatened pax's net connection. I'm really uncomfortable with the way that the pax anon remailer was shut down on what seems to be pure hearsay. I think we need a little more guts from our anon administrators. Stick to your guns! Make them at least deliver an ultimatum to you so you know where the threat came from. A note on whether we cypherpunks should "lie low" -- it's always possible for us to go underground and hide from the authorities. I don't believe we should do this until it's absolutely necessary. As of now, we are legitimate net citizens. M.

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