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Re: Technology 'secures' gunfire [CNN]
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jonathan Wienke wrote: > At 09:06 PM 10/31/97 -0600, Jim Choate wrote: > >> Now police have an electronic witness that can provide similar > >> assistance: a device called SECURES that pinpoints the time and > >> location of gunshots. > In order for this system to be worth anything, it would have to be able to: ... > 3. Monitor conversations throughout the coverage area. A suspicious sound > preceded by a male voice saying "Give me your money, bitch" would be much > more interesting than one preceded by a revving engine. This would have > the added benefits of allowing LEO's to track fugitives via the sound of > their footsteps, their breathing, vehicle engine sounds, etc., as well as > gathering voiceprint data from crimes in progress. > > I think point 3 is the scariest. A properly designed system could do > voiceprint analysis of almost every word spoken in public, tie the > conversations to the identities of the speakers, and archive the time, > location, content and participants of every spoken conversation for long > periods of time in a database that could be searched by keyword, speaker > identity, time, and/or location. The following searches could be done: > > 1. "I want a list of everyone who uttered the words 'buy' and 'crack' in > the same sentence between 2100 and 0330 hours within 500 feet of 123 Maple > Drive between August 7 and December 5." > > 2. "I want a list of all participants in conversations with Citizen-Unit > 754-35-9710 which included the phrase 'BATF agent' in the last 6 months. > > 3. "I want a map of Citizen-Unit 754-35-9710's movements for the last 2 > weeks." ... Jonathan has hit on a point which illustrates the danger of the surveillance technologies that are _already_ in place, vis a vis, the Internet. Something lost in the euphoria over the citizen's radical new ability to access information: Yahoo Search--"Posts by _me_." is that the same technolgy, and more, is at the fingertips of the proverbial 4 Horsemen AND (now for the _really_ bad news) at the fingertips of "John Law, the Citizen's Friend." Sadly, "garbage in--garbage out" _has_ always, and _will_ always, result(ed) in such inanities as Drug Counselors being 'rated' at the same level as Drug Dealers when the computer spits out the results of a badly structured "search for the _bad_guys_." Naturally, when the police mistakenly kick in the door of a Drug Counselor, it is always a 'regretable tragedy' when they shoot holes in the ten year old boy in the hallway who is holding an over-ripe banana which 'looked like a weapon.' (Almost a true life example, told to me by a friend who left her career in law enforcement because she was still in possession of a conscience which was capable of recognizing that children killed by those who are 'just following orders' are just as dead as the children killed by those who are 'out of control.') {The person in question 'pulled' her shot at the last moment, upon realizing she was about to murder a child with a banana. Because the banana "could have been a weapon," an investigation was not required for an officer firing upon an unarmed citizen. I regard this lady as a wonderful example of someone who has held themself to a higher standard than their government regulators and their peers. What is a shame is that someone who _should_ be the type of person charged with protecting us had to leave the system because there is no future for those who choose sanity, logic and humanity over 'following orders.'} If you stop to consider Jonathan's examples of (paraphrased), "give me the names of every citizen in location 'A' at time 'B' who has used the word 'normal' in an email in the last ten years, etc., etc." in light of Internet search engine capabilities being extended to such technologies as 'citizen physical location monitoring', 'voice recognition', 'DNA pattern analysis' (e.g. heriditary potential for violence, etc.), then the future may be very scary, indeed. Think about this: "Ladies and gentleman of the jury, the person who is reading this post is the 'only' individual, out of over 20 million processed by the Never Wrong Criminal Identification Compter System, who is in the post reader's general location, today, has completed their high school education and has a family member who has committed murder in the last five generations." (What? You claim you are not the _only_ person in New York City, with a high school education. Nice try, pal, but the computer is never wrong.) "Although no murder has been committed yet, statistics show that someone in that area will be, within the next two days, so I ask that you return a verdict of 'Guilty of murder in the first degree' and we will pick up and execute the reader of this post as soon as a body turns up." ...in light of _this_: A citizen was found guilty of murder by a jury, based on the slim eyewitness testimony of a passerby who caught a fleeting glimpse of the murderer, despite testimony from over a dozen people that the defendant was, at the time of the murder, attending a wedding thousands of miles away. Some of those giving testimony did not even know the man prior to meeting him at the wedding, and were in no way related to the man, but the jury was still swayed by the prosecutor's claim that this wide variety of law-abiding, average citizens were lying to try and protect the defendant. Do you have a great-great-grandfather who committed murder? Then you are, by heridity, a potential murderer. It's in your blood! This is '10 points against' you. All of the kindness you have don in your life does not count in your favor, because any fool can see that it was done in an attempt to trick the jury. > The Big Brother potential of such a system should be obvious. What is > really scary is that such a system could be built mostly with currently > existing hardware, and at most a few man-years of software development. If > each node in the network performs its own speech to text conversion and > archiving, and coordinates with a central voiceprint ID server, (which > could also provide the sync signal that the nodes would use to > cross-reference between nodes to locate sounds) each node could consist of > a Pentium 200 with some specialized audio signal processing cards and 15-20 > GB of storage. The only really new thing required would be an .AVI-style > format for storing MPEG audio, a text transcript of said audio (which would > need to include keywords for gunshots, passing vehicles, and other events > of interest), and location coordinates (updated on a second to second > basis) which could be indexed for reasonably efficient searching. Of course, Jonathan is a raving lunatic for suggesting these outlandish possibilities, much like the mentally unstable people who history records as believing that one day people would be able to send electromagnetic waves through the atmosphere and have their images and voices appear on machines in distant places. Seriously, history has shown that any technology capable of being used for great evil _will_ be used for great evil. The reason that technology radically increases the ante in the game between good and evil is that if one 'evil' person is in control of technology that ten million 'good' people do not have access to, then the basic humanity or inhumanity of humankind, in general, is really not an important part of the equation which will determine the future. (I challenge all other cypherpunks to a fistfight, the only rule being that I can use an Uzi, and you can't.) Remember...when all is said and done, my dad was an optomist. George Orwelle Jr.

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french cypherpunks
by Judith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi there, Are there any french cypherpunks or french speaking canadian cypherpunks on this list ? I have to discuss privacy on the net in french. To read some articles on this subject would be very helpfull to learn to use the right type of jargon: the dutch-french dictionary does not handle jargon of any type. Btw: did anybody scan their photo's of the HIP '97 (in this case near the cypherpunkerstent-site) yet? I couldn't find any. Merci, best regards, Judith

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Re: Unlocking crypto-secrets Wired article
by Jean-Francois Avon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: Dwight Arthur <dwightarthur(a)mindspring.com> >To: "Dale R. Worley" <worley(a)ariadne.com> >CC: dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu >Subject: Re: Unlocking crypto-secrets Wired article > I have no inside knowledge but picture yourself > as a senator, really concerned about getting re-elected. Picture > yourself looking at video of the victims of some terrorist act somewhere > in the world, staggering out of some ruined building and expiring on > camera. Then picture yourself hearing that if you vote the wrong way and > this happens in the U.S. (or to U.S. citizens anywhere) your name will > be in the papers as the reason that law enforcement was unable to > prevent this. It's hard to argue. And alsom maybe Jim Bell's stuff... Does anybody have any knowledge or heard any rumors of Bell's essay circulating among political circles? Ciao jfa -- Jean-Francois Avon, Pierrefonds(Montreal) QC Canada DePompadour, Societe d'Importation Ltee Finest of Limoges porcelain and crystal JFA Technologies, R&D consultants physicists and engineers, LabView programing. PGP encryption keys at: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon http://bs.mit.edu:8001/pks-toplev.html ID# C58ADD0D : 529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891 ID# 5B51964D : 152ACCBCD4A481B0 254011193237822C

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Re: cute.
by Mix 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Amad3us wrote: >Matthew Nuckolls says >> What's the point in distribuing your public key through the same >> channels as a signature? Kinda defeats the purpose. > >The purpose is to create a persistent nym. The signature, and public >key ensures that you know that this message is from the same person >as you were attempting to nit pick :-] It has been my experience that it is more fun to operate a persistent identity than to post unsigned and unverifiable messages. Providing the key is at least a convenience for people who don't have it already - it saved me a trip to the key server. >> I can't verify that the given public key is indeed yours, since >> you're anonymous. > >True. So it's only as good as the keys you might fetch from a >keyserver that you have no connection to in the web of trust. > >You aren't supposed to link it to my True Name. > >All that can be done is to get a signature from a timestamp server, >and a signature from Bill Stewart's nym key signing service. What would be really nice is if the mailing list machines time stamped messages. There was a discussion a little while ago suggesting that toad.com had been compromised by people who were sowing dissension by partially distributing certain messages. Had toad signed all of its messages, it would be possible to obtain evidence supporting this hypothesis without relying entirely on the word of people we may not know. Had somebody compromised toad, they would still have to correctly sign messages. Later it would have been possible to prove this had occurred by comparing messages and signatures. This would also prevent an attack where somebody forges mail from a cypherpunks list machine to flush out identities. If the attacker sends a unique message to every person, he or she will be able to break an identity if the message is replied to on the list. >This is important because it prevents someone else from generating more >keys with the same userID, such as happened with Tim May's blacknet key. >The only protection I have against that is the public record of my key >being posted to cypherpunks. The http://infinity.nus.sg/cypherpunks/ >archive helps as a public record of first publishing of a key with this >userID. I'm not sure a timestamp matters that much for "authenticating" your key. After all, you don't own "Amad3us", you own key 0x4D162BBE1. If another "Amad3us" shows up, what matters if their string of posts are worth reading, not whether they borrowed your handle. It would cause confusion, but since the cypherpunks are so good at slinging bits, we should be able to handle this. It might even have an advantage: reporters and secret police types will have a harder time dealing with the cypherpunks without adopting some of our technology and ideas and sharing them with others. Monty Cantsin Editor in Chief Smile Magazine http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.htm -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBNFu/fZaWtjSmRH/5AQGSdAf8DdZj05c4/WS/V9YF/o1lZ9W7/5vGlTDf mvU8nFPNT4TB9eha7UW/Ub2xaUI4TneBrWrIwXTeEqo1slUbzmShneeUoUlKMEho +PlrA8NjQhh/QRwMXsVUp4vtoV3oDUbCTRLE8PWIikC7Rpo92UocujfFhsey3Ewu /SCA/TrkjVO8efeR4H6GOBnVWd/+4YigLPtZhP6QzlKjf3Soq5OJNfVlHA3ci+3a UgbM+IQ/OTTkXMVbya60veWrN6/Njo/66D0EyUuHB5/bUHkFIjnWaz1DSG8g0vJq XfFNOusz9Dkrhz0gearv/fbRb93GxXRejTK/Jo9sMJta8pWAm4d1Yg== =5Loi -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Free Market Anarchy (Beck's Folly) - Fundamental flaw
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The fundamental flaw with the justification of a Free Market Anarchy and also the fundamental condemnation of Democracy is that of taxation. However, the theory of democracy does not in any way address the issues of taxation, only how laws are made and what the boundaries on those laws are. In fact, until about the first third of this century there was NO personal taxation in this country at the federal level. Clear prima facia , and to use Beck's verbage 'real', evidence that the assertion that personal taxation and democracy are irrevocably wedded. Ask yourself, why is it that no free market anarchist *ever* mentions commenality in humanity? Why do their have inherent and implicit in their systems a class structure? They would have you believe this is natural, it is not. Class structures are reflections of the beliefs of the people, not some fundamental law of nature. Furhermore, Free Market Anarchy does not address the issues of protection from abuse. It does not recognize in any manner any mechanism for redress of grievances unless you happen to be one of the few who controls the wealth. It further assumes that those who don't have wealth will willingly take this station in life as a given and simply work for those who do have wealth and accept without resentment that they will forever be denied any sort of opportunity to change their station in life except at the whim of the power brokers. It further does not in any way address issues of life, liberty, or pursuits of happines - only monetary wealth. It is clear that having wealth does not in any manner guarantee any sort of empathy for others in the holder. If anthing, history demonstrates that such 'lords of wealth' are pragmatic about collecting wealth to the point of predation. This argument from the specific to the general is fundamentaly flawed and the conclusion suffers because of it. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. How that power is obtained, by vote or specie, is irrelevant as clearly shown by history. Some hold that the majority of the populace suffer taxation at the point of a gun. This assertion is also false. There have historicaly been several political parties which have promised to eliminate personal taxation. In every case those parties could not control more than a truly minimal percentage of the vote. Yes, people say taxation is too high, they do not hold the assertion that taxes should be completely eliminated. Free Market Anarchies are doomed to the same sort of death, and if ever implimented the same sorts of abuse, as all other non-democratic systems. Also, recognize that those who support such systems have a set of commen character flaws. First, they can't differentiate the implimentation from the theory of political systems. They would have you believe that if a given implimentation of a system is flawed or broken than all systems of that ilk are then broken or flawed. Clearly history does not support such assertions. In short, they would throw the baby out with the bathwater. Secondly, these in general are the sorts of people who find glee when they see a polic officer run over in the street. Do you seriously believe that anyone this cold and uncarring would not hesitate for an instant in putting pepper spray in your eyes? Thirdly, they express a view which I call Theory X equality. In short, as long as they are the ones making the profit, the fact that you suffer for it, justly or not, is irrelevant and justified. In more prosaic words, the ends *always* justifies the means. An assertion that history also does not support. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Free Market Anarchy (Beck's Folly) - Fundamental flaw (fwd) [correction]
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > From: Jim Choate <ravage(a)ssz.com> > Subject: Free Market Anarchy (Beck's Folly) - Fundamental flaw > Date: Sat, 1 Nov 1997 19:20:20 -0600 (CST) > The fundamental flaw with the justification of a Free Market Anarchy and > also the fundamental condemnation of Democracy is that of taxation. > > However, the theory of democracy does not in any way address the issues of > taxation, only how laws are made and what the boundaries on those laws are. > In fact, until about the first third of this century there was NO personal > taxation in this country at the federal level. Clear prima facia , and to use > Beck's verbage 'real', evidence that the assertion that personal taxation and > democracy are irrevocably wedded. ^ is false. > Ask yourself, why is it that no free > market anarchist *ever* mentions commenality in humanity? Why do their have > inherent and implicit in their systems a class structure? They would have > you believe this is natural, it is not. Class structures are reflections of > the beliefs of the people, not some fundamental law of nature. > > Furhermore, Free Market Anarchy does not address the issues of protection > from abuse. It does not recognize in any manner any mechanism for redress of > grievances unless you happen to be one of the few who controls the wealth. > It further assumes that those who don't have wealth will willingly take this > station in life as a given and simply work for those who do have wealth and > accept without resentment that they will forever be denied any sort of > opportunity to change their station in life except at the whim of the power > brokers. It further does not in any way address issues of life, liberty, or > pursuits of happines - only monetary wealth. It is clear that having wealth > does not in any manner guarantee any sort of empathy for others in the holder. > If anthing, history demonstrates that such 'lords of wealth' are pragmatic > about collecting wealth to the point of predation. > > This argument from the specific to the general is fundamentaly flawed and > the conclusion suffers because of it. > > Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. How that power is > obtained, by vote or specie, is irrelevant as clearly shown by history. > > Some hold that the majority of the populace suffer taxation at the point of > a gun. This assertion is also false. There have historicaly been several > political parties which have promised to eliminate personal taxation. In > every case those parties could not control more than a truly minimal > percentage of the vote. Yes, people say taxation is too high, they do not > hold the assertion that taxes should be completely eliminated. > > Free Market Anarchies are doomed to the same sort of death, and if ever > implimented the same sorts of abuse, as all other non-democratic systems. > > Also, recognize that those who support such systems have a set of commen > character flaws. First, they can't differentiate the implimentation from the > theory of political systems. They would have you believe that if a given > implimentation of a system is flawed or broken than all systems of that ilk > are then broken or flawed. Clearly history does not support such assertions. > In short, they would throw the baby out with the bathwater. Secondly, these > in general are the sorts of people who find glee when they see a polic > officer run over in the street. Do you seriously believe that anyone this > cold and uncarring would not hesitate for an instant in putting pepper spray > in your eyes? Thirdly, they express a view which I call Theory X equality. > In short, as long as they are the ones making the profit, the fact that you > suffer for it, justly or not, is irrelevant and justified. In more prosaic > words, the ends *always* justifies the means. An assertion that history also > does not support. > > > ____________________________________________________________________ > | | > | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | > | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | > | | > | -Alan Greenspan- | > | | > | _____ The Armadillo Group | > | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | > | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | > | .', |||| `/( e\ | > | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | > | ravage(a)ssz.com | > | 512-451-7087 | > |____________________________________________________________________| >

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Re: FCPUNX:PGP Employee on MKR
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:02 PM 10/30/97 GMT, Adam Back wrote: > Even if you were to use CMR, it is dumb, dumb, dumb, to allow the > snoop key to remain after the message has passed the enforcer -- it > should strip it off on the way out. Unless, of course, the real intention of CMR is GMR. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re: FCPUNX:DEA trying to subpoena book dealers
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:20 AM 10/30/97 -0800, Bill Stewart wrote: > Makes it easier for cops to see that you're not a threat, > or that you are a threat. If your underwear's not Kevlar, > it's not contributing much to the process, and cops are > probably more embarassed about beating up naked people. Watch out for toilet plungers. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Hello, thought you should see this
by srvce＠micro-net.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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No Subject
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

After seeing the intents of PGP Inc. with the release of their new PGP that breaks the old free versions, I have all but written them off as anything but the Enemy, and am waiting for a public reply on the list by Tim May to make it official. But now what? Please someone answer my questions about PGP - it appears that the 5.x versions are not compatible with the 2.x versions which came previous. Is this so? Also, the direction they seem to be heading is in providing more and more non-free GAKked product. But aren't the 2.x and 5.x versions freeware? If so, can't others - a group of individuals - take that source code and build off of that? Piss on these assholes and their licensing fees. It was inevitable, anyway. They are a corporation after all, and the corporations are not on "our" sides. I can see a scenario where government is impotent and destroyed within 10 years. What will remain and will be harder to eradicate are the corporations. I don't think we should rely on corporate software whenever possible, because it always comes with an ulterior motive. Is there an effort to maintain a version of PGP based on the free 2.x sources that is not affiliateed with the fuckwads at PGP Inc.? If not, is it high time some of us began such an effort?

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