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Research Shows Explosives Remain Part Of Human Hair
by R. A. Hettinga 08 Apr '04

08 Apr '04

Depilatory becomes a new standard accessory for the well-...um...-dressed terrorist... Cheers, RAH ------- <http://www.sciencedaily.com/print.php?url=/releases/2004/04/040406083933.htm> Source: University Of Rhode Island Date: 2004-04-06 URL: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/04/040406083933.htm Research Shows Explosives Remain Part Of Human Hair KINGSTON, R.I -- March 17, 2004 -- The comb, that simple device millions of people pass through their hair every day, could become the latest tool in the battle against terrorism. Thatms because a group of University of Rhode Island researchers has found that chemicals used to make bombs remain in the hair of explosives handlers long after repeated washings. The lead researcher, Professor of Chemistry Jimmie Oxley, one of the co-directors of URI's Forensic Science Partnership, has also found that when the research team members attached ordinary gauze to combs, they had effective collection devices. "We are very excited about what we found, because I didnmt know what to expect to find in terms of persistence," Oxley said. "Wemre at the very early stages of developing a practical field technique to link the perpetrator to a crime," the chemist said. "(Oklahoma City bomber Timothy) McVeigh had (the explosive) PETN on his shirt. If someone like him changes his shirt, we could still test his hair." The team's early findings are the result of a two-year, $320,000 grant awarded by the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism. Located in Oklahoma City. The institute was incorporated Sept. 23, 1999, and grew out of the desire of the survivors and families to have a living memorial of the Murrah Federal Building bombing of April 19, 1995. Oxley, who titled the study "A New Source of Evidence: Explosive Traces in Hair," said she pursued the research because hair readily absorbs odors, such as those from cigarette smoke, it is being used for evidence of drug use and because it is washed less frequently than hands and clothes. She wanted to know if all explosives are absorbed equally well, if hair color and type affect adsorption, and whether the explosive, with time and washing, remains persistent. Ultimately, she hopes to establish a protocol that can be established for law enforcement use. Adsorption is the surface assimilation of a gas, vapor or dissolve matter. "We wanted to know if we could get the same chemicals out that we put in," said URI Chemistry Professor Louis Kirschenbuam. The research is being conducted in two phases at both URI and in the United Kingdom, where subjects have been preparing dog-training aids. In the first phase at URI, cut hair was exposed to explosive vapors to see which ones were adsorbed. The persistence of adsorption was studied for washed and unwashed hair. In the U.K, researchers combed subjectsm hair before and after explosive handling. Then, subjects' hair was re-sampled after a time interval and shampooing. Phase 2 of the work being done at URI will study the significance of hair pigment, sex, and race, while Phase 2 in Great Britain will develop law enforcement protocols for recovery of explosive residues in hair. Oxley's team has been examining absorption of common military explosives, such as TNT, PETN and RDX, as well TATP, the suicide bombers' explosive. RDX is the main component of C-4, while PETN is used in detonation cords, sheet explosives and plasticized explosives. In the TNT-tainted hair exposed to air at URI for six days, only small decreases in TNT levels were detected. Hair tainted with TNT and PETN that was washed three times and rinsed still retained small levels of the explosive. "Finding the chemicals after washing, thatms what might turn out to be important," Kirschenbaum said. "I think itms safe to say that volatile chemicals can migrate into the hair. Once itms on there, it's truly stuck." In addition to Oxley and Kirschenbaum, team members are URI Chemistry Professor James Smith and chemistry graduate students Kajal Shinde and Kishore Marimganti. Editor's Note: The original news release can be found here. This story has been adapted from a news release issued by University Of Rhode Island. -- ----------------- 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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Hierarchy, Force Monopoly, and Geodesic Societies (Re: [irtheory] Re: Anarchy and State Behaviors)
by R. A. Hettinga 08 Apr '04

08 Apr '04

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 4:41 AM +0000 4/8/04, Daniel Pineu wrote: >I am very curious about what are your views about the twin concept >of hierarchy Hierarchy emerges as a result of the economics of information switching. When you have expensive nodes (brains) and inexpensive lines (behavior, talking, writing, whatever), you end up with hierarchical networks. When you have a small number of nodes in a network, hierarchical switching (i.e. chains of command, etc.) can't emerge because direct communication is possible. For instance, in neurobiology, emotion is a way of weighting memory. In human networks, we have the ability to have significant emotional relationships with about 12-16 people at a maximum, not coincidentally the size of a hunter-gatherer band, a social unit that stayed with humanity, from our virtual evolution as a separate species until sedentarianism, which preceded agriculture by several thousand years, roughly 12-24,000 years ago. See Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" for a nice popular summary of this process. Food surplus creates an attractive nuisance, and causes large populations of even solitary, non-social animals to create dominance and social hierarchies, as a way of avoiding the wasteful expenditure of energy that constant battle would involve. Salmon streams attract Grizzly bears and Eagles, the town dumps at Churchill Manitoba attracts Polar bears, house-cats in a farm-yard, and the intersection of significant agricultural trading routes causes cities. Proto-humans have traded since they invented tools, including sites where hand-axes were literally manufactured at some negotiated rate of exchange for raw materials collected a tens or hundreds of miles away. Persistence of a food source over great lengths of time creates the evolution of social animals. Wasps evolve into ants, cockroaches evolve into termites, solitary proto-cats and -dogs become social lions and wolves, and so on. As a counterexample, Orang-otans are solitary because the distribution of food in jungles is uniform, sparsely distributed, and random in appearance over time. Notice that the speed of information processing is also a component. An Orang-Otan is a very sophisticated information processor, full of data about what plants bear fruit, when they do so, and where they are. And, contrary to popular belief, a beehive, or a termite or ant nest, is not all *that* hierarchical in its organization. Do not mistake functional specialization, like you find in ants and termites, as hierarchy. See Kevin Kelly's "Out of Control" for a nice survey of this idea. An ant "queen" is, in the final stage of her life, a breeding machine, she doesn't signal, even in a gross sense, what each worker does, in the same way that an army general does for privates, for instance. In mechanical information switching hierarchies, the fastest, most expensive switches are at the top, and there is a single route through the network. In the old phone network, you had a single operator for a small enough town, and central offices in large cities had rooms with hundreds of operators in them. The pre-microprocessor automation of telephony (pulse and then touchtone dialing) put expensive automation at the top of the hierarchy, and, as costs fell, moved down from there. This fall in switching prices, exponential after the invention of the microprocessor, is important, and I'll talk about it more in a bit. Human switching hierarchies aren't so efficient, :-), but certainly the most important information summaries are presented *near* the top of a human-switched information hierarchy, and the most "expensive" switches were certainly at the top, and economic rent being what it is, people literally killed each other to be at the top of those hierarchies. Which brings us to two principal features of international relations through the industrial era: force monopoly, by which you literally define a state whether it involves a single national cultural entity or not, and information/social hierarchies, by which that state is controlled . First of all there's the emergence of geographic force monopoly, which is, more or less, a function of sedentarianism, and later agriculture. Nomads may fight over the immediate use of local resources, a watering-hole, say, but they don't set up principalities (Mancur Olsen says in "Power and Prosperity" that a prince is a bandit who doesn't move :-)). So, when you mix geographic force monopoly with social hierarchy you get first cities, then city-states, then empires, and then nation-states. The progression of which is driven directly by speed of information processing, the span of communication, and the speed of that communication over a specific distance. Oddly enough, it is the ability of communication to transmit emotional information (first word of mouth, then words, then pictures, then moving images and sound, all with ever increasing instantaneity) that allows the mobilization of the most resources. Because of their emotional attachment, people will die for their modern nation-states much more readily than the normal merchant -- or obviously slave -- would die for the current tyrant of their ancient city-state, or feudal aristocrat. While it's safe to say that the British Empire started this, Napoleon was the first memorable modern exploiter of this phenomenon, if one remember that most of the salient features of warfare changed at this time. Prisoners weren't given parole anymore, for instance, but were kept throughout hostilities. Warfare was not a game of honor anymore, but an issue of one's individual and familial survival, the resources of all, not just a trained cadre, could be mobilized for war. Because of the emergence of mass media -- even Napoleon commissioned paintings and drawings throughout each campaign, for instance, which were re-printed in newspapers -- politics in France after the Revolution created a much stronger emotional bond with the state than existed under monarchy. The same thing happened in the United States, and it has extended throughout the west and west-influenced world, until nation-states are the dominant force structure in the world today. What's changing is that the price of information switching has, in fact, *fallen*, since, paradoxically, the first real attempt to create a "natural" monopoly out of the telephony market in the US. (I say "create", with natural in quotes, because modern economics shows us that only a force monopoly can create monopoly in another market.) The paradox comes from the negotiation of universal service in exchange for that monopoly, necessitating the automation of switching. Mechanical switching (pulse-dial) became electronic switching (touchtone), which, through the invention of the transistor - - -- by AT&T to solve this very problem -- became microprocessor switching. We now have an interesting problem, however, and a good explication of the physical effects of this process can be found in Peter Huber's "The Geodesic Network". Remember when I said above that network hierarchy evolves when nodes are dear and lines are cheap. However, we have moved into a world in which nodes can literally be printed, photolithographically. The result is Moore's "Law", the observation (thus not a physical law) that the number of transistors you can cram on a semiconductor continues to double every 18 months or so, affecting processor, and thus switching, prices, accordingly. [Nanotechology at least holds out the possibility of making Von Neumann machines, that is, switches which make copies of themselves, almost as if they were alive, dropping the cost even faster someday, but, for the time being, we'll leave that one out there in the weeds, where it belongs, but remember that progress can sneak up on you, if you're not careful.] When you exponentially drop the price of something, you get significant effects, some of which you can't predict. :-). In the case of physical network architectures, when nodes become cheaper in relation to lines, even large hierarchical networks collapse, or evolve, I suppose, into geodesic structures, like the kind of domes that Bucky Fuller used to build, or the structures you get in carbon when you burn it right and get so-called "buckyballs", which are spheres that look like the same thing. When a bunch of these networks are hooked together, you get a ubiquitous geodesic internetwork, the internet, which is what we have today. If you go look at graphs of the internet, you can tell that huge parts of it are physically geodesic, and certainly, in logical performance, the network is completely geodesic. The result is logical "communities", like this one, instead of geographic ones. Communities where people in different parts of the world can talk to each other on a single topic, or, even, act in consort to make something happen, like, say, develop some open-source code. Or conspire to fly an airliner into a building -- something that wasn't possible without the simulator technology enabled by Moore's Law, and which, as software which can be transmitted and eventually used *anywhere* someday, is an interesting feature of geodesic society that can be discussed some other time. The history of humanity, from the discovery of wild fields of edible grass seed in Mesopotamia until the early 20th century, has been the history of ever-increasing social hierarchy. Social hierarchy which has grown as our ability to store larger amounts of information and to transmit it faster and faster over greater distances, but, as hierarchy itself, has not changed in structure until recently, when the price of information switching has fallen dramatically in relation to the cost of transmitting it, which itself is also falling very fast. I would claim that this points to increasingly geodesic, instead of hierarchical, forms of social organization, and that politics, as an effect of physics, and not a cause of same, :-), will be changed as a result. I think that what we call "terrorism", is in fact, a form of geodesic warfare, for instance. I think that geodesic methods are the only way to protect ourselves from it. The use of GPS and JDAMs in Afghanistan by special forces to destroy whole armies is just the beginning of such kinds of defense, and, frankly, I think we're looking at a world of network-organized entities competing for resources using network-organized force. Personally, I think that results in auction-priced markets force and the end of the efficacy of geographic force monopoly as an effective way to control physical resources. Princes will go back to being bandits, in other words, which, like all progress, if it's cheap enough, is a *good* thing. :-). That, I believe, is the very definition of anarchy, at least in terms of political economics. And, since, like physics, politics is an *effect* of economics, not the other way around... Well, you get the idea. Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0.3 iQA/AwUBQHWSRsPxH8jf3ohaEQLl4ACgivxynGisIYyigyJbRQySe1pcMmgAmwWe WtCP+c84v89nnhTfYIkp7sE0 =sPPT -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- 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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Re: Gmail as Blacknet
by Major Variola (ret) 08 Apr '04

08 Apr '04

At 05:26 AM 4/8/04 -0400, An Metet wrote: >The privacy news has been full of fuss and bluster lately about >Google's proposed Gmail service. >Cypherpunks have two somewhat contradictory positions on the issue. >First, as lovers of privacy, they will share the concerns in the letter >and they would be reluctant to use Gmail as configured, at least with >any pseudonym which hoped to retain privacy. I disagree. A punk would assume any server not under their control archives everything, as do all routers between said punk and the server. But second, as lovers of >freedom, they would encourage Google and every other company to experiment >with new services and new technologies, allowing individuals to freely >decide whether to use them or not. We should use the service but only send encrypted mail :-) >One of the oldest Cypherpunk philosophical thought experiments >was BlackNet, a hypothetical offshore data haven whose main job, >paradoxically, was to defeat privacy. BlackNet would serve as a market >and a storage facility for information that might be of value, one example >being credit rating information. BlackNet demonstrated that even when >third parties sought to prevent the flow of information, for example >by mandating that credit report data be deleted after so many years, >Cypherpunk technologies could keep the information available and alive. The net never forgets. BlackNet would support that behavior even in the face of Men with Guns. >Oddly, few Cypherpunks appeared to notice the inconsistency with a >supposedly privacy-oriented group promoting a technology which would >harm privacy. The actual resolution is that Cypherpunks see privacy as >a means to an end. That end is freedom. Privacy will lead to freedom >by allowing people to communicate and contract without interference and >meddling by interlopers. BlackNet is an example of the kind of system >which would appear if people were truly free. That it harms privacy is >merely an incidental side effect. The LA riots were excellent reminders to the layfolk that guns are important. BlackNet's persistant-despite-your-guns behavior is an excellent reminder to curb your info-promiscuity. >>From the Cypherpunk perspective, the criticism of Gmail misses the mark; >rather, all web mail systems should be understood as fundamentally >inconsistent with privacy. If you want privacy, you have to do it >yourself. Writing an angry letter is at best going to make the privacy >violations more covert. It accomplishes nothing in the end. Yep. It could still be useful for things like distributed data storage, dead-man switches, etc. where content is encrypted. Much like any other free service, only nominally with more storage. ------- I think people have not quite gotten their hands around the speed at which information can be disseminated online. -Monica Lewinsky, LATimes 9 may 01 http://www.latimes.com/business/columns/celebsetup/lat_monica010510.htm

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RE: Research Shows Explosives Remain Part Of Human Hair
by Trei, Peter 08 Apr '04

08 Apr '04

> Major Variola (ret)[SMTP:mv@cdc.gov] > > > At 11:19 AM 4/8/04 +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote: > >On Wed, Apr 07, 2004 at 10:03:13PM -0400, R. A. Hettinga wrote: > >> Depilatory becomes a new standard accessory for the > well-...um...-dressed > >> terrorist... > > > >Ammonium nitrate is an ionic solid. Diesel fuel or equivalent heavy oil > > >fraction don't show up as something unusual. Ditto inorganic > detonators. > > Amyl nitrate ("poppers" in head/sex shops) should have the opposite > affect on TSA goons than normals, ie it should cause some sphincter > puckering > in them. Another thing to spill in the lav. > I'm not to sure on that. I've seen people who are active shooters get their range bags swabbed at airports, but never set off the detectors. You'd have thought that a bag which spent a lot of time containing ammo (smokeless powder is based on cellulose nitrate), uncleaned firearms after sessions, and which sits nearby while firing is undeway, would have all kinds of interesting traces on it. Peter

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Re: Research Shows Explosives Remain Part Of Human Hair
by Major Variola (ret) 08 Apr '04

08 Apr '04

At 11:19 AM 4/8/04 +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote: >On Wed, Apr 07, 2004 at 10:03:13PM -0400, R. A. Hettinga wrote: >> Depilatory becomes a new standard accessory for the well-...um...-dressed >> terrorist... > >Ammonium nitrate is an ionic solid. Diesel fuel or equivalent heavy oil >fraction don't show up as something unusual. Ditto inorganic detonators. Amyl nitrate ("poppers" in head/sex shops) should have the opposite affect on TSA goons than normals, ie it should cause some sphincter puckering in them. Another thing to spill in the lav.

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RE: Gmail as Blacknet
by Tyler Durden 08 Apr '04

08 Apr '04

"Ironically, some of the features of Gmail bear resemblance to BlackNet. In particular, its claimed policy of retaining email indefinitely, even after the recipient has stopped using the account, is reminiscent of BlackNet's function as a data haven, as well as other Cypherpunk projects like the Eternity Network. This retention is objectionable to conventional privacy groups, but Cypherpunks will recognize it as being deeply in accord with their values." Poo poo. The difference between a potential blacknet and Gmail is that there's little doubt that google will cough up the true names of objectionable posters, if and when anyone looking even remotely authoritative/governmental comes pounding on their doors. In a worst-case Blacknet, my True Name will only be gettable by agents of the state via the expenditure of very large amounts of resources, if at all. -TD >From: An Metet <anmetet(a)freedom.gmsociety.org> >To: cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net >Subject: Gmail as Blacknet >Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2004 05:26:00 -0400 > >The privacy news has been full of fuss and bluster lately about >Google's proposed Gmail service. The latest complaint comes at >http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/GmailLetter.htm with an open letter from >dozens of privacy groups to the Google founders asking them to revamp >the service. > >Cypherpunks have two somewhat contradictory positions on the issue. >First, as lovers of privacy, they will share the concerns in the letter >and they would be reluctant to use Gmail as configured, at least with >any pseudonym which hoped to retain privacy. But second, as lovers of >freedom, they would encourage Google and every other company to experiment >with new services and new technologies, allowing individuals to freely >decide whether to use them or not. > >One of the oldest Cypherpunk philosophical thought experiments >was BlackNet, a hypothetical offshore data haven whose main job, >paradoxically, was to defeat privacy. BlackNet would serve as a market >and a storage facility for information that might be of value, one example >being credit rating information. BlackNet demonstrated that even when >third parties sought to prevent the flow of information, for example >by mandating that credit report data be deleted after so many years, >Cypherpunk technologies could keep the information available and alive. > >Oddly, few Cypherpunks appeared to notice the inconsistency with a >supposedly privacy-oriented group promoting a technology which would >harm privacy. The actual resolution is that Cypherpunks see privacy as >a means to an end. That end is freedom. Privacy will lead to freedom >by allowing people to communicate and contract without interference and >meddling by interlopers. BlackNet is an example of the kind of system >which would appear if people were truly free. That it harms privacy is >merely an incidental side effect. > >The lesson is that Cypherpunks value freedom over privacy. They will >therefore welcome Gmail as an institutional experiment that demonstrates >the value of freedom, even if they personally would rather not partake >of its services. > >Ironically, some of the features of Gmail bear resemblance to BlackNet. >In particular, its claimed policy of retaining email indefinitely, >even after the recipient has stopped using the account, is reminiscent >of BlackNet's function as a data haven, as well as other Cypherpunk >projects like the Eternity Network. This retention is objectionable to >conventional privacy groups, but Cypherpunks will recognize it as being >deeply in accord with their values. > >And of course the real lesson of Gmail is that we have no way of >knowing whether Hotmail and other web based email providers are doing >the same thing, but more quietly. These companies may be retaining >and archiving email to a far greater degree than most people imagine. >Cypherpunks know that trusting third parties to protect their information >is the height of foolishness. > > >From the Cypherpunk perspective, the criticism of Gmail misses the mark; >rather, all web mail systems should be understood as fundamentally >inconsistent with privacy. If you want privacy, you have to do it >yourself. Writing an angry letter is at best going to make the privacy >violations more covert. It accomplishes nothing in the end. > _________________________________________________________________ Get rid of annoying pop-up ads with the new MSN Toolbar FREE! http://toolbar.msn.com/go/onm00200414ave/direct/01/

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RE: Firm invites experts to punch holes in ballot software
by Michael_Heyman＠NAI.com 08 Apr '04

08 Apr '04

> From: owner-cryptography(a)metzdowd.com > [mailto:owner-cryptography@metzdowd.com] On Behalf Of Trei, Peter > Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2004 1:17 PM > [SNIP] > > Frankly, the whole online-verification step seems like an > unnecessary complication. > Except to those of us who don't trust the system. Implemented correctly it could be cheap and complications could be hidden from the voter. It could be cheaper - no need to pay people to do an audit when "the people" will do it for you. You only need a small fraction of "the people" to verify their votes to get a high level of confidence that the election is valid. You only need one failure to cast doubt on the election. This requires an un-forgeable receipt that cannot be used for coercion. Un-forgeable we have been doing for a while now with lots of different PK options. A receipt that cannot be used for coercion cannot give any indication to others of who you voted for. Right now this is a big complication (at least to me - I don't know how to create such a receipt that doesn't require mental gymnastics on the part of the voter). -Michael Heyman --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)metzdowd.com

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Fun with Lawyers
by R. A. Hettinga 08 Apr '04

08 Apr '04

What's annoying is that, given the kind of specious settlements in this field and other cases, the ambulance chaser in question could probably afford it. :-). Cheers, RAH --- begin forwarded text

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Hard drives leak from Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs
by "Paweł Krawczyk (IPSec.PL)" 08 Apr '04

08 Apr '04

Polish journal "Nie" (means "No") specialising in scandals has revealed partial contents from 12 hard drives that have leaked from Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. These drives contain more than 4000 documents from years 1992-2004, some of them labelled "secret". After the Ministry and ABW (Agencja Bezpieczenstwa Wewnetrznego, our NSA) have confirmed this leak, minister Cimoszewicz has resigned from his position. The resignation was however not accepted by the president. The drives have leaked when the Ministry has upgraded their computers. Old drives taken by a technical worker of the Ministry and sold to a retailer for a price of the drive itself . The retailer, however, realized economical potential of the data stored on the drives and sold them to the journalists. This case should teaches us a lot, indeed... -- Pawel Krawczyk, Krakow, Poland http://echelon.pl/kravietz/ ABA: http://www.aba.krakow.pl/ horses: http://kabardians.com/ crypto: http://ipsec.pl/

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Gmail as Blacknet
by An Metet 08 Apr '04

08 Apr '04

The privacy news has been full of fuss and bluster lately about Google's proposed Gmail service. The latest complaint comes at http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/GmailLetter.htm with an open letter from dozens of privacy groups to the Google founders asking them to revamp the service. Cypherpunks have two somewhat contradictory positions on the issue. First, as lovers of privacy, they will share the concerns in the letter and they would be reluctant to use Gmail as configured, at least with any pseudonym which hoped to retain privacy. But second, as lovers of freedom, they would encourage Google and every other company to experiment with new services and new technologies, allowing individuals to freely decide whether to use them or not. One of the oldest Cypherpunk philosophical thought experiments was BlackNet, a hypothetical offshore data haven whose main job, paradoxically, was to defeat privacy. BlackNet would serve as a market and a storage facility for information that might be of value, one example being credit rating information. BlackNet demonstrated that even when third parties sought to prevent the flow of information, for example by mandating that credit report data be deleted after so many years, Cypherpunk technologies could keep the information available and alive. Oddly, few Cypherpunks appeared to notice the inconsistency with a supposedly privacy-oriented group promoting a technology which would harm privacy. The actual resolution is that Cypherpunks see privacy as a means to an end. That end is freedom. Privacy will lead to freedom by allowing people to communicate and contract without interference and meddling by interlopers. BlackNet is an example of the kind of system which would appear if people were truly free. That it harms privacy is merely an incidental side effect. The lesson is that Cypherpunks value freedom over privacy. They will therefore welcome Gmail as an institutional experiment that demonstrates the value of freedom, even if they personally would rather not partake of its services. Ironically, some of the features of Gmail bear resemblance to BlackNet. In particular, its claimed policy of retaining email indefinitely, even after the recipient has stopped using the account, is reminiscent of BlackNet's function as a data haven, as well as other Cypherpunk projects like the Eternity Network. This retention is objectionable to conventional privacy groups, but Cypherpunks will recognize it as being deeply in accord with their values. And of course the real lesson of Gmail is that we have no way of knowing whether Hotmail and other web based email providers are doing the same thing, but more quietly. These companies may be retaining and archiving email to a far greater degree than most people imagine. Cypherpunks know that trusting third parties to protect their information is the height of foolishness. >From the Cypherpunk perspective, the criticism of Gmail misses the mark; rather, all web mail systems should be understood as fundamentally inconsistent with privacy. If you want privacy, you have to do it yourself. Writing an angry letter is at best going to make the privacy violations more covert. It accomplishes nothing in the end.

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