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CyberTects/SSZ status (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: >From ravage(a)ssz.com Sun Jun 1 22:33:10 1997 From: Jim Choate <ravage(a)ssz.com> Message-Id: <199706020333.WAA10315(a)einstein.ssz.com> Subject: CyberTects/SSZ status To: users(a)einstein.ssz.com Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 22:33:08 -0500 (CDT) Cc: consulting(a)einstein.ssz.com, pwright(a)einstein.ssz.com, toddm(a)tivoli.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Content-Length: 2928 Hi, We had our business planning meeting tonite and the following was dediced: * CyberTects will be no more by the end of the week. In its place is a new Commercial Web Service firm called (tadah).. The Armadillo Group There will be specific instructions in a day or so about where to send your payments for outstanding service bills. * Update of service fee's: Monthly webpage $25.00 Customer Server Hosting, monthly $100.00 SLIP/PPP, dial-in, monthly $20.00 SLIP/PPP, dedicated, monthly, 1 IP $100.00 IP Sets, 10 IP's (initial 1 & 9 more), annual $100.00 Shell access, w/ other account only $10.00 Labor charges, hourly, rounded up $80.00 Sales Tax NOT included, 8.25% in Texas * We will be focusing on a limited set of services: - expansion of services provided outside the SOHO sector into the general business community. - various flavors of dial-in and dedicated connectivity options including a move to ISDN availablity with the increase in our primary feed to the Internet. - webpage hosting w/ in-house development as required by the customer. - hosting of customers servers in-house providing a level of technical support previously available only to large firms. * The current Real/Time ISDN contract expires at the end of September. At this point we plan to have either a T1 or ADSL in place with additional servers. * It looks like the current plan is to NOT have onsite service, training, and other services available through CyberTects in the past propogate through this change over. There will be a clearer mailing later in the week better detailing exactly what will be available and what we will be dropping. Note: Even if the firm as a whole ceases to host mailing lists I will continue to host them using my own resources. I will continue to do some onsite service and such on my own. * The future of the Elgin site expansion to fully mirror SSZ and provide 100% backup may not be implimented because of the drop of other services. I have not decided if this will be something that I take on personaly if it is dropped. If you have any further questions or would like to express your views on these changes, please don't send email to me. Instead send it to 'consulting(a)ssz.com' so that the whole group may discuss the issues. Our goal as always is to provide you with professional service & support. Jim Choate The Armadillo Group ravage(a)ssz.com

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Re: Rotenberg as the Uber Enemy
by TruthMonger.tm＠dev.null 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Robert A. Costner wrote: > If EFGA has a > position, it is that first the current laws should be tested against spam. No > new laws should be proposed until today's laws can be shown to be useless > against the problem. Regardless, you are already preparing to participate in the process of new laws being implemented. > DATA GATHERING > While there is nothing wrong with data > harvesting in it's self, what one does with the info may be called into > question. The data is going to be misused. Future legislation will be nothing more than a fight over who gets to misuse it. > Data Collection procedures may be less restrictive than identification > requirements, or content bans. > The reason the TCPA is carefully considered is that once the law allowed for > the promulgation of rules, the FCC had a series of public comment periods and > promoted rules that highly favored privacy while trying to balance the fair > practices of telemarketers. Unfortunately, with spam, most spammers do not > have "fair practices". This can be translated to mean that the little guys can do the same thing that large companies do, only without having to hire high-priced legal help to tell them how to route around the "rules." > If is highly likely that the spam question could be quickly addressed and more > clearly defined without new laws simply by a comment period and the > promulgation of new rules. No new laws, just new rules. Doublespeak? > SPAM vs TELEMARKETING > In 1990, more than 30,000 telemarketing operations employed over 18 million > Americans. Easily we could see over 300K spam operators in business, > employing less than one million people. Each of these individual spammers > could be sending out daily spams. Many of them would be able to reach a > significant portion of the internet users on a daily basis. Right. I'm going to receive 300,000 spams a day without taking steps to stop it, because I'm stupid. And nobody in the free market is going to figure out that they can make a shitload of money by providing a product that solves the problem. And enough people are going to sort through 300,000 emails a day and send people money to keep all the spammers operating. Since we're all so stupid and incompetent, I guess we'd better count on the government and the EFGA-type organizations to do what is necessary to "save" us. Robert's immediate solution is to take a law that doesn't work and promulgate "new rules" so that it does. Right. The "new rules" are going to be decided on by the same lame bunch of actors who made the "old rules" which don't work. And all of those people who aren't paying attention to the old rules are going to have a vision from heaven which tells them to follow the new rules. Question: "With all of the organizations 'busting their ass' for our benefit, when do we start seeing the *good* legislation?" I can use strong crypto to keep my communications private and I can maintain control over my private key. The government wants to pass legislation to change that. What's to debate? I need groups of self-appointed saviors to negotiate the method and timing of how my privacy and freedom are going to be taken away? I don't think so! These "saviors" of our rights are doing nothing more than serving as a buffer for the government as what we already have is being stolen from us. They have taken it upon themselves to negotiate our retreat in the face of loss of our privacy and freedom. They are providing the government with a stamp of approval for "reasonable compromise" of our freedom and privacy via "acceptable legislation." If these organizations are so concerned about my rights, then why do I never see the words "Nazi Ratfuckers!" in their press releases? No more free buffets? No more power lunches with the power mongers? No more nights in the Lincoln bedroom? (OK. I'll calm down and be "reasonable." How about the word, "Bullshit!" I've read the government press releases, I've heard the speeches. It's bullshit, but all I hear coming out of the mouths of the "saviors" of my rights is replies in kind--politispeak.) I keep hearing how these organizations that haven't kept us from getting fucked in the past are working for the future, when one of our own is in jail *now*. Want to impress me? Do something for Jim Bell, because tomorrow it's Tim May, and Adam Back a week later (they got Noriega, and they can get Adam, too.) You don't have time to aide Jim Bell, but you have time to give me dire warnings about getting 300,000 emails a day? You have time to tell me that the "solution" is to have the people who wrote rules that don't work write *new* rules? Horseshit! TruthMonger

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Economist: The disappearing taxpayer
by Vincent Cate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Cypherpunks views of the future in mainstream media. Kind of fun. The following is from: http://www.economist.com/issue/31-05-97/ld4660row.html -- Vince http://www.offshore.com.ai/vince/ [The Economist] The disappearing taxpayer "THE art of taxation", advised Louis XIV's treasurer, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, "consists in so plucking the goose to obtain the largest amount of feathers, with the least possible amount of hissing." His observation remains true, except for one big change. Unlike geese, people in the 17th century did not know how to fly. Now they can. In the coming decades electronic commerce -- combined with the growing ease with which firms can shift their operations from one part of the world to another -- will make it ever easier for people to flee countries where taxes are high, or to evade tax altogether by doing their business in cyberspace. The hole this will leave behind is already worrying many governments (see ). Some argue that it is "unfair" for others to lure their firms away by levying lower taxes, and are pushing for the harmonisation of taxes. Another new idea is to impose a tax on electronic transactions. But although governments everywhere will have to start thinking -- and soon -- about how to raise taxes in the newly weightless global economy, both remedies are flawed. A question of sovereignty . . . Those who advocate harmonisation say that the alternative is a "race to the bottom", as governments sacrifice social spending on the altar of competitiveness. But different countries have different spending needs and make different judgments about the proportion of income to devote to transfers and public services. Indeed -- remember "no taxation without representation" -- such decisions lie at the heart of modern politics. That is why even in the EU, a relentless prober of the boundaries of national sovereignty, proposals to harmonise taxes have made little progress so far. A recent proposal from a panel of economists to make up for the tax losses caused by electronic commerce by introducing a "bit tax" on flows of electronic information is similarly defective. It is hard to see how a single country or even a group might impose such a tax without simply forcing on-line transactions offshore. But in so far as it succeeded, such a tax might just hamper the adoption of information technology, depriving people and businesses of its great productivity benefits. So if neither of these ideas is any good, why not do nothing? It is true that the full impact of electronic commerce and globalisation on governments' taxation powers is still some way off. The fact that tax levels vary from 60% of GDP in Sweden to 32% in America suggests that even in a globalising economy governments are still able to make distinctive fiscal choices. However, every so often a big Swedish company -- Ericsson most recently -- threatens to decamp because egregious income taxes make it difficult to recruit skilled employees. America's corporate taxes have withered to insignificance because of the mobility of firms. At present these are merely straws in the wind, and hardly new ones, but there is no doubt which way the wind is blowing. Some competition between tax regimes may be a good thing, if it encourages governments to show more discipline in their tax and spending policies. But one day globalisation and electronic commerce could make a sizeable dent in a country's total tax revenues. And these forces have already made a big impact on the way the burden of taxes falls on a population. This is what rules out the option of inaction. . . . and of equity Not all firms, workers and products are equally mobile. Entrepreneurs, scientists, tennis players and film stars may be able to uproot themselves in search of lower taxes, but the average worker is still unlikely to become a tax refugee. Although this may reassure governments, it implies that governments will eventually have to cut taxes on the most mobile factors of production, notably skilled workers, while taxes on less mobile unskilled workers will have to rise. Over the past decade or so taxes on capital have already fallen sharply while those on labour have risen. In future it will be harder to tax firms or high-earners at high rates because they are the most mobile. The implication is that unskilled labour will have to bear a greater burden. If they are to mitigate this change while maintaining their tax revenues, governments need to speed up tax reforms that are needed anyway to improve economic efficiency. In most countries at present, exemptions and loopholes distort the allocation of resources. Broadening the tax base by scrapping exemptions such as mortgage interest relief and zero rates of VAT on certain goods and services would allow a much lower rate of tax and therefore reduce the incentive for both tax evasion and migration. Less complex reporting requirements would reduce another incentive to hide from the taxman. A second needed change is to shift the tax base from income towards consumption and property, which is both immobile and hard to hide. Even consumption is becoming more mobile. But a consumption tax would both remove the present disincentive to save and help to collect taxes from tax dodgers (even those whose income comes from invisible Internet sales have to spend it). Having changed so much else in the world economy, globalisation and information technology will inevitably undermine the way governments raise taxes. Reforming the tax system to plug the hole is going to be hard. Not reforming it would be even worse. The Economist Home Page - Search - Contents - Next article © Copyright 1997 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All Rights Reserved

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Firewalls
by lucifer＠dhp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timmy C[retin] May prefers to have sex with little kids because his own penis is like that of a three-year-old. ____ _(____)_ _ooO_(_o__o_)_Ooo_ Timmy C[retin] May

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Re: Creating a unique ID number for a dollar
by pgut001＠cs.auckland.ac.nz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Death rays from Mars made Tim May <tcmay(a)got.net> write: >There's a way to generate a number for any person which is unique. It is not >shared by anyone else on the planet. It's not guaranteed unique. First, the dollar you use may be a forgery (why forge a dollar? I don't know, maybe they're practicing on low-denomination notes which noone ever looks at closely so they can get the twenties and hundreds perfect. I have a vague memory of someone doing this with either US dollars or UK pound notes some time ago, motivated by the "noone would ever bother forging a dollar/pound, so it has to be genuine" mentality). In addition you'd have to specify "US dollar" rather than just "dollar" because, apart from the different serial number formats, some countries will reissue banknotes if the originals are damaged in printing, which leads to the possibility of two (legitimate) notes with the same serial number being in circulation if the original isn't destroyed as required (I have some of these replacement notes for now-defunct NZ dollar and two-dollar notes stashed away somewhere). Does the US Treasury issue replacement notes if the originals are damaged in printing, or does it just destroy the notes and leave it at that? Peter.

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New SSN Law
by lucifer＠dhp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Robert A. Costner wrote: > Why does the store need my social security number for me to purchase soft > drinks and eggs? (40 cents off on eggs this week) I see no reason for it. > If I provide a false number, I have probably committed some crime. > > Yes, I would support a law that forbids private companies to ask for social > security numbers except for tax purposes. Am I missing something? Didn't we used to have one of those? Wasn't that changed so that government and corporate interests could put us all in more efficient boxes to control us and make money off of us? Some states already use the SSN on the driver's licenses. More will follow. The SSN is our National Identity Card and there is no going back. The tattoo is history and the Identity Chip is the future.

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Australian explosion explained...
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > S P A C E V I E W S > Volume Year 1997, Issue 6 > June 1997 > http://www.seds.org/spaceviews/9706/ <snip> > Things That Go Boom in the Night: Scientists working for the National > Science Foundation have concluded that a peculiar, loud explosion heard > in the Australian outback in September 1993 was just a meteorite, and > not evidence of terrorist activity. The explosion seemed to be located > near a ranch owned by Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese cult linked to the > gassing of the Tokyo subway system in 1995 that injured thousands of > morning commuters. The cult was reported interested in developing > nuclear weapons and was mining uranium in the area. However, seismic > data recorded during the event are better explained by a small iron > meteorite crashing to Earth. The meteorite explanation also fits well > with reports of a bright streak seen in the sky at the time of the > explosion. ----------------- 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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List of reliable remailers
by Raph Levien 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I operate a remailer pinging service which collects detailed information about remailer features and reliability. To use it, just finger remailer-list(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu There is also a Web version of the same information, plus lots of interesting links to remailer-related resources, at: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~raph/remailer-list.html This information is used by premail, a remailer chaining and PGP encrypting client for outgoing mail. For more information, see: http://www.c2.org/~raph/premail.html For the PGP public keys of the remailers, finger pgpkeys(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu This is the current info: REMAILER LIST This is an automatically generated listing of remailers. The first part of the listing shows the remailers along with configuration options and special features for each of the remailers. The second part shows the 12-day history, and average latency and uptime for each remailer. You can also get this list by fingering remailer-list(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu. $remailer{"extropia"} = "<remail(a)miron.vip.best.com> cpunk pgp special"; $remailer{"mix"} = "<mixmaster(a)remail.obscura.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek ksub reord ?"; $remailer{"replay"} = "<remailer(a)replay.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut post ek"; $remailer{"exon"} = "<remailer(a)remailer.nl.com> cpunk pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"haystack"} = "<haystack(a)holy.cow.net> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"lucifer"} = "<lucifer(a)dhp.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"jam"} = "<remailer(a)cypherpunks.ca> cpunk mix pgp hash middle latent cut ek"; $remailer{"winsock"} = "<winsock(a)rigel.cyberpass.net> cpunk pgp pgponly hash cut ksub reord"; $remailer{'nym'} = '<config(a)nym.alias.net> newnym pgp'; $remailer{"balls"} = "<remailer(a)huge.cajones.com> cpunk pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"squirrel"} = "<mix(a)squirrel.owl.de> cpunk mix pgp pgponly hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"middle"} = "<middleman(a)jpunix.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek reord"; $remailer{'cyber'} = '<alias(a)alias.cyberpass.net> alpha pgp'; $remailer{"dustbin"} = "<dustman(a)athensnet.com> cpunk pgp hash latent cut ek mix reord middle"; $remailer{'weasel'} = '<config(a)weasel.owl.de> newnym pgp'; $remailer{"reno"} = "<middleman(a)cyberpass.net> cpunk mix pgp hash middle latent cut ek reord ?"; $remailer{"wazoo"} = "<remailer(a)wazoo.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"shaman"} = "<remailer(a)lycaeum.org> cpunk pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"hidden"} = "<remailer(a)hidden.net> cpunk pgp hash latent cut"; catalyst(a)netcom.com is _not_ a remailer. lmccarth(a)ducie.cs.umass.edu is _not_ a remailer. usura(a)replay.com is _not_ a remailer. remailer(a)crynwr.com is _not_ a remailer. There is no remailer at relay.com. Groups of remailers sharing a machine or operator: (cyber mix) (weasel squirrel) The alpha and nymrod nymservers are down due to abuse. However, you can use the nym or weasel (newnym style) nymservers. The cyber nymserver is quite reliable for outgoing mail (which is what's measured here), but is exhibiting serious reliability problems for incoming mail. The squirrel and winsock remailers accept PGP encrypted mail only. 403 Permission denied errors have been caused by a flaky disk on the Berkeley WWW server. This seems to be fixed now. The penet remailer is closed. Last update: Mon 2 Jun 97 6:45:35 PDT remailer email address history latency uptime ----------------------------------------------------------------------- hidden remailer(a)hidden.net ########-##* 27:13 100.00% jam remailer(a)cypherpunks.ca ************ 10:49 99.96% winsock winsock(a)rigel.cyberpass.net -+------+--- 4:03:03 99.93% weasel config(a)weasel.owl.de ++-++++++++ 1:51:36 99.91% squirrel mix(a)squirrel.owl.de ++-+++++-++ 1:52:02 99.87% cyber alias(a)alias.cyberpass.net +* *++****** 13:57 99.86% replay remailer(a)replay.com ****** ***** 11:57 99.75% mix mixmaster(a)remail.obscura.com -.---***.- 7:32:07 96.99% lucifer lucifer(a)dhp.com ++-+++++++ 49:21 95.54% reno middleman(a)cyberpass.net ++- --+--+ 1:44:06 90.54% balls remailer(a)huge.cajones.com #*####*### 1:27 82.42% nym config(a)nym.alias.net *#*** 3:02 37.19% History key * # response in less than 5 minutes. * * response in less than 1 hour. * + response in less than 4 hours. * - response in less than 24 hours. * . response in more than 1 day. * _ response came back too late (more than 2 days). cpunk A major class of remailers. Supports Request-Remailing-To: field. eric A variant of the cpunk style. Uses Anon-Send-To: instead. penet The third class of remailers (at least for right now). Uses X-Anon-To: in the header. pgp Remailer supports encryption with PGP. A period after the keyword means that the short name, rather than the full email address, should be used as the encryption key ID. hash Supports ## pasting, so anything can be put into the headers of outgoing messages. ksub Remailer always kills subject header, even in non-pgp mode. nsub Remailer always preserves subject header, even in pgp mode. latent Supports Matt Ghio's Latent-Time: option. cut Supports Matt Ghio's Cutmarks: option. post Post to Usenet using Post-To: or Anon-Post-To: header. ek Encrypt responses in reply blocks using Encrypt-Key: header. special Accepts only pgp encrypted messages. mix Can accept messages in Mixmaster format. reord Attempts to foil traffic analysis by reordering messages. Note: I'm relying on the word of the remailer operator here, and haven't verified the reord info myself. mon Remailer has been known to monitor contents of private email. filter Remailer has been known to filter messages based on content. If not listed in conjunction with mon, then only messages destined for public forums are subject to filtering. Raph Levien

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Re: May's Banal Rant
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Michael Froomkin wrote: >I don't understand this. Of all the alphabet soup privacy groups out >there, EPIC is the one I consider most pro-privacy and anonymity other >than the ACLU itself. And EPIC knows the tech better, on the whole >(although the ACLU is quite clued-up too). It is true that EPIC is not >absolutist on SAFE -- and I'm not quite sure that they are right to give >even the inch they gave to get a mile -- but they're awfully good. > >Rotenburg should be a near-hero to most readers of this list. Instead, >canabalism. Weird. Very weird. What most of us think is very weird is Rotenburg's apparent inability to carry on a coherent dialogue. Tim May raised several solid and specific points. We've got back ad hominem attacks on "libertarians". Instead of name calling, Rotenburg would have done well to simply justify (or change) his position. At this point, Mr. Rotenburg and his supporters should explain exactly what it is they do for us and how we can verify it. "We arrived at a compromise with the Senate" is not persuasive to most of the people on this list. When you believe that privacy will be promoted by hiring more bureacrats the level of trust warranted is not high. So, if EPIC is doing any good, it had better be the kind of good we can monitor. As for the ACLU, they are notoriously inconsistent when it comes to the Constitution. They seem to be pretty good with the First Amendment, but that's about it. They undermine the Second Amendment. They campaign for welfare on the basis that it is a prerequisite for the exercise of civil rights. They sue aspirin manufacturers for labelling their products in English. They push "fair" credit laws. Etc. Etc. We don't need friends like the ACLU or, it appears, EPIC. Dr. Roberts

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Guilty Verdict in Denver Show Trial
by mpd＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Guilty on all 11 counts, of course. Of course, once you eliminate the testimony coerced by holding witnesses for days and threatening them with the death penalty, the "bomb residue" invented by the FBI Crime Lab, and numerous other things, nothing even places the defendent at the site of the explosion, much less proves he was responsible for it. Of course, to have the correct psychological effect on the Sheeple, it is not necessary that the government convict and execute the prepetrator. Killing any government-hating militia-friendly scapegoat will do. For extra credit, let's have a pool to predict the number of federal buildings which will blow up on the day of the execution. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd(a)netcom.com $ via Finger. $

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