- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: Social Security Fraud
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 1:15 AM 12/13/1996, Huge Cajones Remailer wrote: >>What laws would an employee violate? What are the chances of >>conviction? What are the likely penalties if convicted? > > ...upon conviction thereof, be fined not more than $1,000, or >imprisoned not more than 1 year, or both." Ouch! >.. . shall be guilty of a felony and upon conviction thereof shall be >fined under title 18 or imprisoned for not more than five years, or >both." Yikes! Thanks to Catfish Friend for the fine research work. So how often are people prosecuted under these laws? That is, if you pay your taxes and don't steal from people, but do give your employer the wrong SS number, what are the odds that you will be prosecuted? If prosecuted, are the odds high that you will receive jail time? Assume a good lawyer, spotless criminal record, and a favored racial class. Red Rackham

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Is This for Real?
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Can you trust anecdotal evidence? Are the statisticians lying, are the marketeers just keeping you entranced; do covert agencies send electromagnet currents through your body, are blatant, secret plots against your privacy in place? Stay tuned for the latest update from . . . P s y c h o P u n k s ! * Yikes - now we need a discussion on teleology & epistemology. .. Blanc * (just kidding. It's Friday afternoon)

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Re: Is This for Real?
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:35 PM 12/13/1996, Blanc Weber wrote: >Can you trust anecdotal evidence? > > Are the statisticians lying, > are the marketeers just keeping you entranced; > do covert agencies send > electromagnet currents through your body, > are blatant, secret plots against your privacy > in place? > >Stay tuned for the latest update from . . . > > P s y c h o P u n k s ! * > > >Yikes - now we need a discussion on teleology & epistemology. > > .. >Blanc >* (just kidding. It's Friday afternoon) It's not the Cypherpunks that are crazy - it's the world! ;-) Perhaps an example will be persuasive. Richard Feynman had some interesting things to say about the history of measured charge of the electron. If you look at a graph of the "official" value over time you will find that it drifts downwards to the correct value, or at any rate the value which is universally accepted today. If the charge on the electron has been constant this century - and that seems safe - you would have expected the results of each successive study to be scattered around the actual value. Instead, they start out a little below Milliken's original value and steadily move downward. The most likely explanation is that the experimenters did not want to seem too far out in their results and fudged them. (This is Feynman's explanation.) The charge of the electron is verifiable "hard" science to a degree the social sciences cannot even dream of approaching, and yet we find that the "professionals" were fudging their results. Not just one or two, but a whole flock of them working independently. The charge of the electron is hard for people to get worked up over. It has no political relevance. There is no real reason to boost its value. The social sciences, however, are political in the extreme. Aside from issues of anticipated future earnings (or even employment), many social scientists have strong political beliefs which motivate their work. Given that their studies are often not reproduced - one study can take many years to complete - and that they contradict each other when they are reproduced, I do not feel unlimited confidence in their conclusions. Red Rackham

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Re: Social Security Fraud
by AwakenToMe＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It seems to me the government wouldn't like it because someone else (the real owner of the SS#) would be getting the $$$. It is also fraud because this is how the government keeps track of your workplace. Giving a wrong ss# would lead the government to believe that person with that ss# is working two jobs and only paying the taxes in april for one job.

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Re: Wired Integrity
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:35 PM 12/13/1996, Sandy Sandfort wrote: >> What is troubling is that it is written by Sandy Sandfort who >> works at C2Net.... > >...At the time I wrote and submitted the article I neither worked >for Sameer... Thank you for the clear explanation. Just so you know, I did not doubt your integrity for an instant. Wired should have appended a short paragraph explaining the possible conflict of interest. The Little Green Man

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RE: Is This for Real?
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: nobody(a)huge.cajones.com/aka Red Rackham It's not the Cypherpunks that are crazy - it's the world! ;-) ........................................................ That's right, Red. <g> Actually, I'm not in need of persuasion regarding the subject of evidence (anecdotal or otherwise). I'm aware of human nature and the frailties of intellect/psychology which can affect the results. It's easy to trust another's word when one does not have much knowledge of what can go wrong or doesn't know "how to know", or how to distinguish between fact & fancy. It's also easy to ignore evidence even when it is blatantly apparent, so that no amount of persuasion will convince a person to give up a mistaken conclusion. There are vested interests at work in the things people do, and it is sometimes shocking to realize that these have been at play when one wasn't expecting it, as in your example from Richard Feynman. That is why it is very important to always note whose interest is being served in any sort of persuasive bit of news from any source. A good question to keep in mind is "what are they trying to accomplish". .. Blanc > >

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CPU_two
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

12-13-96 "A hardware device may offer a solution to software virus problems" Calluna, a Scottish disc drive company, has developed a hardware product which it believes offers computers complete protection against viruses. It consists of a microprocessor on a small circuit board which is placed between the PC's hard disc drive and its system board, and which functions independently of the PC's own CPU as a second CPU. The microprocessor can be programmed to monitor all traffic being routed to the PC's hard disc drive. If it detects virus-like activity or any other illegal activity it alerts the user and allows the option of blocking access to the hard disc drive. The second CPU could also be allocated partitioned sections of the computer's hard drive to store all material downloaded from the Internet. Or the device could be used as a firewall to prevent unauthorised access to the PC's hard drive. [Might this have crypto use?] ----- CPU_two

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Magic Numbers in MD5
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I am curious where some of the magic numbers in MD5 originated. First, we have the four chaining variables, A, B, C, and D which are initialized with apparently random numbers. Are they as random as they look, or are they carefully chosen? Second, we have the t_i values. Schneier's first edition says this: "In step i, t_i is the integer part of 4294967296xabs(sin(i)), when i is in radians. (Note that 4294967296 is 2^32.)" Does abs(sin()) have some properties that are especially conducive to strengthening MD5 or is it just a function to generate mildly random numbers? If the latter, wouldn't the algorithm be stronger if it was used with completely random numbers? Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Re: ITARs effects
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:06 AM 12/13/96 -0500, Adam Shostack wrote: >This implies that putting something up for FTP == export. Holy >shit. Sure. What did you expect? -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred Make your mark in the history of mathematics. Use the spare cycles of your PC/PPC/UNIX box to help find a new prime. http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/justforfun/prime.htm

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Re: [Privacy] Airline background checks...
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:53 AM 12/13/96 -0800, aaron(a)herringn.com wrote: > >WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Under plans to overhaul the airline security system, >making a plane reservation would trigger an instant profile of a >passenger's background, including past travels and possible criminal >history information. > >[...] > >Government should pay Just in case that somebody isn't clear as to what "government should pay" means. It means you and I through out taxes. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred Make your mark in the history of mathematics. Use the spare cycles of your PC/PPC/UNIX box to help find a new prime. http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/justforfun/prime.htm

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