- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: Plea from a parent who wants to keep their kid free of SSNs
by Syniker＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sorry that I'm not of any faith, so can't identify that way... and I've never let any children live long enough to get 'number's for them... But I'm totally empathetic with your argument... and agree with you completely... this is a sucking situation... and it's NOT right. I can only say press on in your complaints... the dreadful IRS 'may' be undergoing some changes real soon... and you may be able to take advantage... What I'd personally do -- is shine the deductions before I'd ever give in to these bastards... and instead -- short the US Treasury markets... and smile all the way to the bank with my just rewards.... Best to you... hope someone here can help better.... LarryM.

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Forward: Private Information Retrieval Talk friday
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Thu, 25 Sep 1997 19:11:39 -0400 To: dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu From: Kent Borg <kentborg(a)borg.org> Subject: Forward: Private Information Retrieval Talk friday Sender: bounce-dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: Kent Borg <kentborg(a)borg.org> This isn't strictly commerce, but it is anonymity related, and that can be important for electronic commerce. It is also likely to be nice and techie, for those who need an occasional does of substance. Finally, I forward this to the Digital Commerce Society of Boston list because it is damn close to Boston. -kb, the Kent who is enjoying a good news in digital land day. << start of forwarded material >> ** From: rivest(a)theory.lcs.mit.edu (Ron Rivest) ** Date: Thu, 25 Sep 97 10:31:48 EDT ** To: cis-reading-group(a)theory.lcs.mit.edu, cis-seminars(a)theory.lcs.mit.edu ** Subject: Talk friday ** ** ** There will be a CIS seminar this Friday. All are welcome! ** ** Title: Protecting Data Privacy in Private Information Retrieval Schemes. ** Speaker: Tal Malkin ** When: 1:30--3:30 (talk starts at 2PM) Friday, September 26, 1997 ** Where: NE43-518 ** ** Abstract: ** ** Private Information Retrieval (PIR) schemes allow a user to retrieve ** the i-th bit of a data string x, replicated in k>=2 databases (in the ** information-theoretic setting) or k>=1 databases (in the computational ** setting), while keeping the value of i private. The main cost measure ** for such a scheme is its communication complexity. ** ** We study PIR schemes where in addition to the user's privacy we ** require {\em data privacy}. That is, in every invocation of the ** retrieval protocol the user learns exactly a single (physical) bit of ** x and no other information about the data. All currently known PIR ** schemes fail to meet this requirement, which is essential for ** ``real-world'' applications. Solutions to this problem also yield ** efficient distributed implementations of the cryptographic 1 out of n ** oblivious transfer primitive. ** ** We present transformations that allow translating PIR schemes into ** ones that respect data privacy as well, with a small penalty in the ** communication and randomness complexity. In particular we get: ** a k-database scheme of complexity $O(\log n\cdot n^{1/(2k-1)})$ for ** every k>=2; an $O(\log n)$-database scheme of poly-logarithmic ** complexity; and a 2-database computational PIR scheme of complexity ** $O(n^c)$, for every constant $c>0$. All these schemes require only a ** single round of interaction. A {\em single} database computational ** scheme can also be achieved, based on the hardness of deciding ** quadratic residuosity and using a multi-round protocol. ** ** Joint work with Yael Gertner, Yuval Ishai, and Eyal Kushilevitz. ** << end of forwarded material >> -- Kent Borg H: +1-617-776-6899 kentborg(a)borg.org W: "Then with daybreak not quite risen into dawn, the night and day still deadlocked, round the pyre a work brigade of picked Achaeans grouped." - Homer's Illiad (7-500, Fagles tr.) For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "dcsb-request(a)ai.mit.edu" with one line of text: "help". --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/

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FIRING LINE DEBATE
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text X-Sender: rah(a)pop.sneaker.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Thu, 25 Sep 1997 21:48:02 -0400 To: dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu From: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: FIRING LINE DEBATE Sender: bounce-dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> Now, *this* is fun... Cheers, Bob --- begin forwarded text From: Some Producer :-) Date: Thu, 25 Sep 1997 18:55:13 -0400 (EDT) To: rah(a)shipwright.com Subject: FIRING LINE DEBATE Rodney, Thank you for your e-mail in regards to having a FIRING LINE DEBATE in Boston. I read your proposal abd I to feel it would make an interesting debate. I'm meeting with the producer and Mr. Buckley next week and will show the your proposal. Whenever you get a chance please write back where you can be reached. If you need to reach me please don't hesitate to call <phone number snipped>. Sincerely, <Some Producer's .sig> --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "dcsb-request(a)ai.mit.edu" with one line of text: "help". --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/

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Special Firing Line Debate on the regulation of financial encryption and internet commerce?
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text X-Sender: rah(a)pop.sneaker.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Fri, 19 Sep 1997 14:16:43 -0400 To: dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu From: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: Special Firing Line Debate on the regulation of financial encryption and internet commerce? Sender: bounce-dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> --- begin forwarded text X-Sender: rah(a)pop.sneaker.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Fri, 19 Sep 1997 13:44:39 -0400 To:Somebody at SCTV From: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: Special Firing Line Debate on the regulation of financial encryption and internet commerce? Cc: rah(a)shipwright.com, Rodney Thayer <rodney(a)sabletech.com> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- <Somebody>, I talked to someone at WGBH, and they said that Firing Line is produced there at SCETV. Since I couldn't find an address for Warren Stibel(sp?) Productions on the net anywhere, I figure if I send this to you, as <identifying information elided>, that you might be able to forward the following to the appropropriate folks who could help. Thanks for your best efforts on our behalf, Robert Hettinga Moderator, The Digital Commerce Society of Boston - ------------- To Whom it May Concern, My name is Robert Hettinga, and I'm the moderator of the Digital Commerce Society of Boston, an informal group of about 300 or so people involved in digital commerce and financial cryptography who hang out together on an internet email list and meet once a month for lunch and a speaker at the downtown Harvard Club, here in Boston. A sister group is just getting started in New York, and there have been rumblings about doing it in Washington, as well. We've been doing this for a little over two years now, and we've had lots of interesting speakers, on everything from the gory guts of internet transaction and cryptography protocols to the effect of the internet on market efficiency, to, of course, government encryption policy, which is why I'm writing you this. A couple of months ago, the DCSB program committee and I decided that, given the increasing government interest in encryption on the net, now evidenced by two or three bills, and a lot of legislative skulduggery the past couple of weeks, we thought it would be a good idea to shed a little light on the situation with a debate on the subject. My first thought, of course, was Mr. Buckley's famous Firing Line Special Debates. In light of recent events, my program committee has encouraged me, and Rodney Thayer, a member of the committee and a well known cryptographic developer, to persue the idea more vigorously. :-) Most of the discussions surrounding the control of encryption technology on the net focus on the issue of privacy, and privacy, like, say, flight, is an inherent good. Well, privacy is to most people, anyway... We at DCSB believe, however, that the most significant impact of cryptography on the net is not just privacy, it's economics. That is, it's not "gee, we can fly" which made flight economically useful, or even military use of aviation technology, but commercial activities like barnstorming, mail planes, aviation racing, the DC3, and, eventually, coach fare to Cleveland. :-). The same thing is true with encryption on the internet. Most of us at DCSB believe that financial encryption on a ubiquitous internet will prove to be the very cheapest way to effect any transaction whatsoever, from pico-payments for internet switching, to gigadollar project-bond issues and foriegn currency transactions. (Actually, lots of us think there'll be private currencies, but that's another story...) Let me give you a pretty over-the-top example of what financial encryption technology can do right now, without any further science. There is actual code running which can do this. Strong financial cryptography allows you to create unforgeable cryptographic objects. It allows you to assign value to one of those objects, just like an unforgeable dollar bill can be assigned the value of a dollar. Because that object can be tested independantly of the person who gave it to you (just like you can inspect a dollar bill), you don't care who gives you money, as long as their money's good. Notice that all forms of modern money, checks, debit and credit cards, brokerage accounts, wire transfers and the like, require you to know *who* you're doing business with, so that if they send you a fraudulent debit or credit, you, or somebody you're associated with, can hunt them down and send them to jail. None of that, including the jail part :-), representing the force-monopoly of the modern nation state, is necessary when you use these cryptographic objects to buy and sell with. Some of us have even come to call these cryptographic objects "digital bearer certificates", after the bearer bonds of not so long ago. This type of financial encryption technology, some of us claim, will probably be 1000 to 10,000 times cheaper to use, on a per-transaction basis, than normal book entry settlement -- the kind you currently use when you send your credit card over the net. The technology also allows us to do cash settled business, at any distance, for anything you can send down a wire: movies, words, music, legal advice, surgery instructions, whatever. That's important, because old fashioned bearer bonds, which settled instantly, were made obsolete not by tax policy (economics creates policy, not the other way) as liberals would have you believe :-), but by the economics of their transport and storage. That is, you couldn't shove a bearer bond or a large value piece of cash down a wire to settle a trade. The only way to do that was with book-entries, debits and credits, in other words, and to do *that*, you had to biometrically identify all parties to a trade, and, more to the point, you have to wait for the transaction to percolate through the books of all the trade's parties and their intermediaries in order for the trade to clear and settle. This requirement for biometric identity and transaction logging is, of course, at the root of all our present concerns about financial privacy, but you can now see that we've put the cart before the horse: our privacy, or lack of it, is directly caused by the efficiency of our transaction mechanisms over paper methods. If there was a strictly private way to do the same thing with the same or greater improvement that book-entry settlement had over paper, it would happen, and lots of financial privacy would result. In addition, if we didn't need the government as the ultimate "error-handler" in our transaction protocols, we wouldn't "need" government to regulate our markets -- and the rest of our lives -- by extension. Now, as you've seen, digital bearer settlement opens up a pretty large can of worms, but they're libertarian worms, :-), as the cover story of the September 8th issue of Forbes points out. A story, by the way, I had a hand in putting together, as Josh McHugh, the Forbes reporter, pretty much told the story as I told it to him, and interviewed the people I pointed him to. For my efforts, I even found myself mentioned once in a sidebar with Walter Wriston and Alan Greenspan ;-). My mother, who, at 75, still sits on the New Mexico State Republican Committee, was pretty happy about that. She's been wondering why I've been wasting all this time on the net... :-). Josh contacted me after reading a story in Wired's July issue on the First International Conference on Financial Cryptography (FC97), which I helped organize on Anguilla this past February. FC97 was covered by NTT Japan, the New York Times, the Financial Times, Institutional Investor, and, of course, (with yet another single mention in thousands of words ;-)) Wired. The web site for FC98, this year's conference, is <http:www.fc98.ai>, if you'd like to see that. Anyway, I think that I fairly speak for the DCSB membership when I say that government restrictions on cryptography, (and by extension, financial cryptography) are restrictions on economics, which, communism has shown us, policy makers restrict at their own peril. "Reality is not Optional", to quote the title of one of Thomas Sowell's Forbes columns. And, so, here's the debate I'd like to have. On the left, defenders of the state's right to control crime and espionage (and its population), with crypto-knowlegable people from law enforcement, the intellegence community and government to back them up. And on the right, some well-known freemarketers and crypto- um, anarchists. :-). Walter Wriston, former chairman of Citicorp, for example, would be a good choice, so would David Friedman, son of Milton. Even Phyllis Schlafly has articulated a strong pro-cryptography position, though on first amendment grounds (which, by the way, is the single thread keeping strong cryptography from outright prohibition at the moment). I think that, given the last couple of articles in Forbes on cryptography, (and the entire contents of Forbes ASAP every month ;-)) Mr. Forbes would also agree to helping with the debate. And Mr. Buckley, of course. I think, anyway. He has made some very strong defenses of social conservativism over the years, but I expect that he would come down in favor of deregulating strong cryptography, especially for financial and economic reasons. DCSB proposes a Special Firing Line Debate, in Faneuil Hall, site of debates during the Revolution, and the venue for numerous modern debates like this one. Essentially, we'd get the room and the crowd, get you up to speed on the issues if you'd like, and point you to some good people on both sides of the issue to fill out the panel if you want them. You guys organize the debate itself, and bring the cameras. What can we do to help you guys make this happen? How soon can we get started? :-). Cheers, Robert Hettinga Moderator, The Digital Commerce Society of Boston -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0 Charset: noconv iQEVAwUBNCK538UCGwxmWcHhAQHayggAk2u1w8uxrS1f42Sstk8GG3RMxocW6PCy czICF4K3BIiz1AMtRRRSjwR5q90wSdJl+zbhasmy6DZecE9qLA9VPe4F0ArVDtCk +7XhW/snYHyNciki18+pC9OHkpWRLXox7F0JYVylOOFd3VhwkLeIbw+JZ54SI1LM 4rWikFOz9LKvW3M+3lkxHi3p1AZppNZ3SonvwbBCeCGHoNQNn9c/O1Z90sNXEg89 YpTbUyZEMAvXSgFz6fTq93fhu9K88lb86XkjYAxDYyNMoEV61Irg7qw7PLUDUJEq bNRnrqHrjIcbFQvO8+IMkliTxZFpY3YRs2UDb/0fsYtTv5p1vt7UsA== =dFOI -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "dcsb-request(a)ai.mit.edu" with one line of text: "help". --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/

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Re: Why no version of SAFE removes export ctrls, and all are dangerous
by John Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> >Legislative history is not a guidepost I like to follow when considering >whether a bill is a good one. Fine, but what I quoted to you was the definition of generally available, FROM THE TEXT OF THE BILL ITSELF. It is in paragraph 5B of that part of the bill. Look yourself, or read it below, and you will see that it doesn't say anything about the software having to be available overseas. That part of your article was mistaken. I like your reporting so I don't want to over do this, but you should know that the bill does not require what you said: Sure, removing export controls completely would benefit everyone, but SAFE doesn't go that far: Only software "that is generally available" overseas may be exported. Which means if I invent a new data-scrambling method that nobody overseas has developed, I'm screwed. >Note the Supremes largely rejected the >government's arguments that the legislative history of the CDA justified it >as a law. Instead you should look at the plain text of the law, which says >software not requiring a license is: > >"(A) any software, including software with encryption capabilities > "(i) that is generally available, as is, and is > designed for installation by the purchaser; or > "(ii) that is in the public domain for which > copyright or other protection is not available > under title 17, United States Code, or that is > available to the public because it is generally > accessible to the interested public in any form; or >> >>There's nothing about it having to be available overseas. You are >>probably confusing it with the hardware part: > >Nope, the "generally available" clause above talks about software. Reread >the text of the bill, not some staffer's wet dreams about what they want it >to say. Section 5B from the text of the bill, again (formatted better): (B) the term `generally available' means, in the case of software (including software with encryption capabilities), software that is offered for sale, license, or transfer to any person without restriction, whether or not for consideration, including, but not limited to, over-the-counter retail sales, mail order transactions, phone order transactions, electronic distribution, or sale on approval; Nothing about foreign software. >Then there's the bit Tim was complaining about: > > "(3) SOFTWARE WITH ENCRYPTION CAPABILITIES. -- The Secretary shall > authorize the export or reexport of software with encryption >capabilities for > nonmilitary end-uses in any country to which exports of software of >similar > capability are permitted for use by financial institutions not >controlled in fact by > United States persons, unless there is substantial evidence that >such software will > be -- > > "(A) diverted to a military end-use or an end-use supporting > international terrorism; > "(B) modified for military or terrorist end-use; or > "(C) reexported without any authorization by the United States > that may be required under this Act. > >Of course there's substantial evidence that PGP etc. will be used by >unapproved people. That's another problem with SAFE. So you agree with his interpretation that software must pass the tests in both paragraph 2 and paragraph 3? That doesn't seem right. Para 2 says that no license is required for the kind of software it describes. Para 3 then provides a procedure for authorizing the export of software which meets a different test (similar to what is allowed for export to non-US financial institutions). But these are different tests and different software. I say that paragraph 2 applies basically to "off the shelf" software, commercial or public domain. No license is required to export that. That's why there are those definitions of generally available and as-is. Software which does not fall into these categories can then be authorized for export under paragraph 3, except that the authorization can be cancelled if it is diverted to terrorists. If they wanted to diversion rules to apply to paragraph 2, they would have written it that way. But the way it is written it is only the paragraph 3 software which can lose its authorization. This is a very logical interpretation. There is no point in restricting the export of paragraph 2 software since it is available to anyone in the US. Any terrorist can walk into Egghead and buy Netscape with strong crypto, or any disk encryption package. This is an argument which cypherpunks have made for years, and they are 100% right. Why is it so hard to believe that the congressman followed the same logic. "John ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

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by web-promotions＠nevwest.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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None
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

All governments are built on lies. All organizations are built on lies. CM

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Re: Remailer Attack
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Tim May wrote: >At 2:58 PM -0700 9/25/97, Anonymous (sic) wrote: >>The remailers should all have about the same latency. 0 seconds seems >>like a good Schelling point. What would it take to reduce remailer >>latency to under 60 seconds for most of the remailers? Do people need >>old 486s to dedicate to the task? Do they need money? Better >>software? >> >>If you operate a remailer, please tell us what you need to make it >>really work well. Perhaps the rest of us can help make it happen. > >Think about a zero latency. How would mixing then occur? How would the >mapping between incoming and outcoming messages be obscured? > >Latency, per se, is of course not the key issue. Mixing is. It depends on your application. Right now, it's hard to get messages through the remailer network in good time *and* the security isn't all that high. Increased traffic would give us more options as far as mixing and the like. But increased traffic won't happen until we have usable remailer network. Right now it's sort of usable, but only for the dedicated, and there aren't many of us. I seem to be the only persistent authenticated nym who posts with any frequency. Tools which are not used do not get improved. >* throwaway accounts, and yet with some robustness or reputation capital >backing them One problem with operating a nym is that people almost always respond to it with suspicion and hostility, even on this list. It would be nice to have an ordinary looking e-mail address that took in messages, encrypted them for your public key, and then sent them out to alt.anonymous.messages for pickup. Going the other way it would be nice if the account would accept signed messages and send them out as normal e-mail or news articles. This would allow nyms to participate in NetWorld like everyone else. Note that this does not require one to trust the operator of the machine - all they have is a public key and no information of your identity. This should be easy to set up. >* increased traffic at all levels > >* a profit motive for remailers, using "digital postage" (though this may >work against the second point, having more traffic) If digital postage results in remailer operators making money, this should increase the quality of the remailer network. A high quality remailer network should increase traffic. Once we have a high quality high traffic remailer network which is profitable (!!!), well, things could really start to cook. A quarter per message per hop seems reasonable at this time. The annual revenue hits a million dollars if a little over 10,000 messages a day are handled by the network. This figure does not seem unattainable. Those who find a quarter is too much should start remailers. This is a little off the wall, but if there was a significant market for remailers, some organizations might start affinity remailers. That is, if you like the ACLU you can give them money by routing your messages through their remailer. We tend to like the people we trust. Another feature that would be nice would be to be able to define the message id in advance. Were this available it would be possible to send a message to all three cypherpunks nodes simultaneously to maximize its propagation and to ensure reliability. Were this supported for Usenet gateways, it would be possible to gate the list through the remailers such that the person doing the gating would be hard to identify. Also, BCC fields would be nice. I don't know a way to post a message to the cypherpunks list and bcc: it at the same time to the coderpunks list, but it would be real useful. (The idea is to let people on coderpunks know about a relevant topic, but keep it on the main list.) >* more chaining tools for average users (on Windows and Macintosh machines, >using standard mailers) It's probably better to take the tools as far they will go for ourselves and not worry too much about evangelizing right now. Once the core technologies are in place and are working reliably, we will be in a stronger position to take things to The People, if it doesn't happen of its own accord. Monty Cantsin Editor in Chief Smile Magazine http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.html -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBNCsj3JaWtjSmRH/5AQH2mAf+PCobu6dVqOYFCBsiXFITbKDAWDHpIdHr yOSvSIIK2UI7UYCGq16ECLAvSqyVUQ2xuxVC729CQ61tbHYszcQ+j2+KaorJKREi HmpvKmmQo7fwbeURNdDqIXxxObZDaJMuItqPeMO1QHVt7zPyjh44UUuYZjOV633Z 94LlalFRNyHKD8Q4GCBpsTQ+T1evVYKgHpx5HL2H8hJF2ELMdwJ+JXyU+7xMg0Pe qNo4M39bJG4REQoJ6xZ5xFQp7Vs3PdloLAd7wyencwOnpWCUFzZ53WjM6qdDiLzT 9yZNT5n1ZqM0kf8DikOv4ZsGOiP4E+aRqtJsgyt4tppCpjErk5j3GA== =Birf -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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re: Chutzpah! FBI Calls Privacy Extremists Elitist
by Martin Minow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Addressing a workshop on how far society should go in trading off >privacy for effective law enforcement, McDonald said privacy activists >had fought any balance in proposed encryption legislation. > ... Extreme privacy >positions were ultimately elitist and nondemocratic in that they >presumed the views of a knowing privacy cognoscenti should pre-empt >the views of the nation's elected officials and the Supreme Court, >McDonald said. This reminds me of the state legislature that tried to change the value of pi to something simpler in order to help students struggling with their homework. Fortunately, someone had the good sense to bring in a "knowing mathematics cognoscenti" to pound some sense into the politicians. >Extremists presumed that the citizens could not trust the elected >government and the Supreme Court to make decisions or to correct >mistakes if any are made, McDonald said. Where is Thomas Jefferson when you really need him? Martin Minow minow(a)apple.com

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Plea from a parent who wants to keep their kid free of SSNs
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Declan McCullagh wrote: >The ACLU certainly deserves criticism for its knee-jerk left-wing >view on some issues. I'd also be interested in seeing them take a >stand on 2nd Amendment issues; right now they don't have a position, >as I understand it. But on free speech and SSN-type issues they're >generally good. The ACLU can be fairly criticized for their general sympathy to the causes of the Democratic Party. This would be acceptable if they were honest about it, but they are not. Likewise, while they may have no official position on the 2nd amendment, you will generally find members of the organization are staunchly opposed to it. Again, no real tragedy except that their advertising proclaims their organization is the only one in the United States devoted to protecting the Bill of Rights. Unfortunately, it just isn't true. They protect the amendments they like and ignore or, in the case of the 2nd amendment, undermine the rest. Most people probably don't know how the ACLU is structured. There is a national organization and then a variety of state level chapters which have a great deal of autonomy. The chapters do a lot of the day to day work helping people who are getting severely screwed by their local governments. (There was a great case about ten years ago involving a state sponsored alcohol rehabilitation program. Once in, it was understood that participants wouldn't be allowed to leave for about 60 days so they could really dry out. It seems there was a little funding program and the facilities provided couldn't handle all the people who applied. So, they threw a bunch of the women in jail! The ACLU chapters handle cases like this all the time. They don't get much credit for it and nobody else does much of this work.) However, the chapters tend to be a little more squirrely than the national organization. Usually when you hear about some flaky case "The ACLU" was pushing, it will turn out that a chapter was behind it. About five years ago the Southern California chapter campaigned against California Proposition 165 because it would cut welfare benefits. A friend and ACLU member complained that this was not a civil liberties issue and they should not be campaigning for the Democratic Party. This letter came back: >Dear Mr. X, > >First, let me apologize for the lengthy delay in answering your >letter, which was recently referred to me from the National ACLU >office. > >You question whether the ACLU met its charter mandate to preserve >civil liberties when it opposed Prop. 165 on the ground that it would >adversely affect the poor. The ACLU-SC firmly believes that economic >justic and civil liberties are inextricably intertwined. Without the >assurance of basic economic security -- including jobs that pay a fair >living wage, adequate food, housing, and health care -- most people >cannot fully exercise their civil liberties and civil rights. > >This office has consistently opposed cuts in federal, state, or local >budgets that will adversely affect poor people who depend upon >governmental assistance to fulfill their basic needs. Poverty in the >United States is the result, to a great extent, of government policies >which favor privileged groups at the expense of the disadvantaged, and >which deprive the latter of opportunities to enjoy the full range of >rights guaranteed under the Constitution. > >Again, please accept my apology for not getting back to you sooner. > >Sincerely, > >J. Random Democrat >Associate Director While the ACLU is great in certain ways, so far as most cypherpunks are concerned I recommend considering them to be uncertain allies. It's sad. If they were truly a multi-partisan organization which was devoted to the Bill of Rights they would be many times more effective than they are currently. In principle there is no reason why the NRA and the ACLU shouldn't be the same organization except the membership of each brings too much baggage to the table. Monty Cantsin Editor in Chief Smile Magazine http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.html -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBNCxGwZaWtjSmRH/5AQHwDgf+Oqe8QSQFE/NjrtV5pyEsI/Tra2Z9oq8I j6Us0c03d7qeoFSDYcA3jyuGb2Zs8FSH9GuR8bJ/ZMjcBgfPLYgb+mXgBero6Uet MlTEabwU1gNau8Rz66FKY2T1aiM7u972RUYscUyKZYmh9qp+T3xPUJoNBSPj99fS jDinQd1AXZPOltB0NRrEXZInyPxwqKhRql9iQ5Azf8/r3DfxLgLWhj6gu2gd3+dw WdYfuo+qHX1afmbHVVQrhyHoNa1UjkhKmgt0Va5ddONlik+7PhUsi0hm9dU2UnRW hLZWOhoZaxrBc8BrT/43dLQFd1WinDAsYuN5CfSYT3L5o0oCCKvciA== =jqeP -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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