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Put up or shut up! was Re: legality of wiretapping: a "key" distinction
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I think those of you who continue to answer the unresearched rants of amateur lawyers waste your efforts on trying to change the learning habits of other, hopefully, mature adults. If it ain't good by now, forget it. Using, as you say, out-of-the-shower ideas to re-argue settled caselaw are almost always fruitless. Since the intents of the ranters are generally anarchistic, why even involve the law and justice. Even if their ideas have good philosophical basis there is little hope for the broad changes they seek in the political or legal landscape (given the powerful and selfish interests of those inside and outside the beltway) without a great trauma to the system. Look at the relatively pitifully accomplishments Jefferson was able to show for his many years of Republican efforts, and that after serving two terms as president. I believe that this is also the case for individuals. Almost all of us have great difficulty adopting new behaviors (e.g., dietary, excercise, change in unhealthy/illegal sexual behavior), even ones thought beneficial, unless there is great incentive or an experience which is so fundemental (e.g., near death) that we are forced confront it head on. My advice to these amateur anarchists is, if they really believe in their quest, become professionals and develop and use whatever means (civial disobedience, crypto, CBW, AP, etc.) they think they require to shock the system into confronting your demands and see how it plays out. Otherwise shut up! PGP Fingerprint: FE 90 1A 95 9D EA 8D 61 81 2E CC A9 A4 4A FB A9 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Snoop Daty Data | Internet: azur(a)netcom.com Grinder | Sacred Cow Meat Co. | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Just say NO to prescription DRUGS. "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." -- C.S. Lewis "Surveillence is ultimately just another form of media, and thus, potential entertainment." -- G. Beato

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Re: "Drift net fishing," GAK, FBI, and NSA
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>>At 2:05 PM -0700 10/6/96, Steve Schear wrote: >(quoting me) > >>Are SSN and other ID required when opening a 'pre-paid' credit card >>account? That is, the ones for persons with poor credit who are required >>to maintain a balance sufficient to pay off the charges? Perhaps we could >>put our heads together and determine a way to become franchised by MC/VISA >>and offer 'affinity' type accounts with no address requirements (all >>statments are sent via remailer/nym email). > >A couple of people on this list talked about a similar thing, a "Privacy >Card," with the explicit policy of not reporting transactions in detail to >the Big Three (the government-friendly TRW Credit, Equifax, and Transunion). > >The idea being that if a "market for privacy" exists, someone ought to be >able to make a nice piece of change offering a card that protects privacy. > >One problem is that many people _want_ credit card transactions reported to >the Big Three, to build up their credit record. > >(But many don't care. I've been using a VISA card issued by my stock broker >for 12 years now. It's a "debit card," though it's handled by a merchant >exactly as a credit card, and they probably can't see any difference. What >I gathered when buying my current house, is that none of these transactions >were part of my "credit history," as I was actually using a debit card. All >of those now using, or planning to use, a debit card would be ideal >candidates for a "Privacy Card.") No doubt. > >Such a deal would have to be one of Visa, MasterCard, or Discover, with >American Express a distant fourth. (I don't even know if these >companies/tradenames would even allow such a thing, of course.) The cost of >rolling out a brand new type of card would of course be prohibitively high. > The banks offering these pre-paid 'credit', really debit, cards are already offering such an instrument. Although I've got my hands full at the moment, I've been asked by several money sources to investigate some unconventional, but legal, instrument services. Seems, as you say, you only have to guarantee the holder that they and establish and transact business with relatively good anonymity. >(I have no expectation than this will be done, and I think I said so at the >time. Ever the realist, in some ways, I knew no one would take on such a >complex project. Just as no one followed through with the "Cypherpunks >Credit Union" idea, discussed at several meetings in 1993.) > I'm not making any promises, but I have some banking experience (6 years at Citicorp) developing financial products, ATM, wireless and transaction crypto. The most difficult part, besides the marketing, would be getting a MC/VISA franchise under acceptable contractual terms. I've never done this sort of thing. Seems you wouldn't need to pitch this to MC/VISA any different than many of the other similar 'debit' cards. Unless their contracts specifically contain a 'know you payee' provision (required for checking and savings, which are Fed insured, and money transmitters), it shouldn't be a problem. -- Steve

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Londinium
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

So a few days in Londinium for the Internet Show at the Aggie (now the Business Design Centre) in the People's Republic of Islington. While I was in town, Tony Blair's voicemail was hacked (it wasn't me) and we discovered that he is a politician trying to fool the voters. Also, a public domain game called "Schoolyard Slaughter" written for an obsolete computer system and awarding points for head shots to children was attacked in the press. It was distributed on shareware disks and CDs and not on the dreaded Net but they talked about the net in any case. The interesting thing about "Schoolyard Slaughter" is that similar games involving adult males and aliens ("Doom" par example) have been around for a long time. The lesser controversy surrounding games like Doom suggests that the commentators (and perhaps the public) are guilty of speciesism, ageism, and gender bias. After all, the fictional slaughter of adult males and aliens should be just as bad as the fictional slaughter of children. None of the ISPs represented at the Internet Show would comment on whether or not they were going to ban customers who refused to rate their sites or news posts. But they were just sales types. I did teach a young lady working at the UUNET/Pipex booth how to telnet. She'd never done so before. DCF

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Re: Another view of anarchy...
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:58 PM 10/6/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >At 2:26 PM -0700 10/6/96, Greg Broiles wrote: > >As for "assassination politics," I think the theoretical idea of using >betting pools, untraceable payments, etc., are worthwhile _theoretical_ >ideas to discuss, occasionally (indeed, I would hope--seriously!--that the >FBI is aware of such possibilities and is thinking about them). > >For me, there is no one I can think of that I would want killed. Not my >taunters, not my elected officials (though I despise Senator Fineswine), >not court officials, not even the Devil Himself. Clinton, er, I mean >"Saddam Hussein." The Hitler example ("Wouldn't you go back in time and >kill Hitler if you could?") is so hackneyed as to be meaningless. Actually, >I suppose I would be happy if Pol Pot were to die, and maybe Idi Amin (and >I'm not sure both are still alive), but for the most part I don't think >fundamental problems are directly attributable to specific individuals. However, it won't really matter, will it? Unless a person is REALLY atypical, nearly all the people he'd want to see dead are similarly hated by thousands or millions of others, or they are in classes of people who are hated by millions for what they do. (criminals, cops, politicians, and despots both domestic and foreign etc.) That being the case, you personally would probably never have to donate anything; you're pretty well assured that other people will do this "work" for you. This is as it should be, I suppose. Furthermore, most of your potential targets (were you to want to name them) would probably be fully aware of their vulnerability, and would resign or run away or start behaving in hopes of surviving. All this is why I think that the status quo might collapse rather suddenly, as in Eastern Europe 1989, where in the span of a couple weeks the governments fell comparatively bloodlessly. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Did Jesus masturbate ?
by I~nigo Gonzalez 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Yes, you guessed right: the Subject came from alt.2600 famous line noise thread.... About Utah, Mormons, Religion /etc... Is someone mailing ciphertext to the list in the form of Noise ???? Please use _plaintext_ or just learn Crypto.

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Dole web site cracked?
by Rick Campbell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- So, I just finished watching the debate and at the very end, Bob Dole suggested that people check out www.dole-kemp.org. I was already on playing decision96.digital.com so I went for it. The first page says ``Oops! You've tried to access the old way. Please choose the new way instead.'' Clicking on `new' gives a black background page with two yellow arrows, one left and one right. The left one gives you ``Nope, you can't go back now''. The Right one gives you www.cg96.org, the Clinton-Gore home page. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMlh5vhj0UvMeUesFAQGzgQP9GlcZb4rRSGcVjdsnvMxOrB2lDdz6KFSw UCjAR/UhQLOs8UW1cHS8vlRljCwf8nDemxOzZ7/JMdTQbiNcdblQbxMGoJusJDal mOOgYJiVSFEBtX07JOp07m1w34GjlFaSTtGKERNCEePxtSO3HDG7V7H3AIoV7xFQ oIBKQmdKQho= =C1w9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Rick Campbell <campbell(a)c2.net> ``One of the symptoms of an approaching http://www.c2.net/~campbell/ nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.'' - Bertrand Russel

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Re: Put up or shut up!
by Timothy C. May 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To elaborate on some points I just made.... >My forum is this list, and a few related places. It's a forum comparable, >modulo the times, to the forums other thinkers have had. I should also add that I am not encouraging _others_ to break the laws I am unwilling to break myself, for financial reasons. You won't find me cheering on people to stop paying taxes, selling secrets about the B-2 bomber to Iran, and so on. >Your mileage may vary, but this "amateur anarchist" intends to keep on >doing what he's doing and is not interested in "crossing the line" to the >point where his assets will be seized. I believe I am more valuable--in terms of meeting the goals I think are reasonable for myself and others, and in terms of ultimately moving things--by doing the work I've done. Now, there are some on this list who believe I should have been programming Macintosh applications instead of writing, and some who apparently believe I should be refusing to pay taxes and fighting the IRS in court, but I believe working on the implications of "crypto anarchy" is both interesting and important. Who, after all, pushed for "remailers" at the first Cypherpunks meeting? Who first (to my knowledge) described how to use the LSB of a digital image to steganographically store messages, in sci.crypt posts in 1989? Who has talked for many years about the implications of digital cash for so many things, including tax policies and government's ability to control transactions? Who coined several phrases, including "Big Brother Inside" (in the Intel logo), "National borders are just speed bumps on the information highway," and other such slogans? Who has attended most physical CP meetings in the Bay Area (a half dozen others have, too)? Who wrote a 1.2 MB FAQ on key issues? Sorry if I sound defensive, but I chafe when I hear nonsense about "Put up or shut up." Going to jail is rarely an effective option. Losing my assets and having to go back to work as a chip physicist even less so. Look, I've talked about some fairly controversial ideas. But, I think, even the various lawyers on the list--Brian Davis, ex-DA, Michael Froomkin, law prof, Black Unicorn, occupation unknown, Greg Broiles, recent law school grad--will have to admit that nothing I have said as an opinion about what _might_ happen, about what the implications of strong cryptography might be, etc., or about what I would _like_ to see happen, is "prosecutable" in any reasonable sense. Sure, Eugene Debs was thrown in jail for arguing the military draft was unconstitutional (so much for _his_ free speech), but that was then and this is now. I don't believe any single post I have ever made could actually result in prosecution, as I have committed no crimes. (Nor, for that matter, do I think Jim Bell has ever really "crossed the line." While some of his posts come perilously close to advocating the murder of public officials, none of them seem to actually do so, nor to provide any proof that he is actually conspiring to create an actual system, even if conspiracy to create such a system could be found to violate a specific law, absent any actual murders, etc.) So, I'll "put up or shut up" by continuing my present path. I reject the idea that one must lay on the tracks as a sacrifice of one's self to the Cause. Usually it's better to suvive and continue fighting in other ways. --Tim May "The government announcement is disastrous," said Jim Bidzos,.."We warned IBM that the National Security Agency would try to twist their technology." [NYT, 1996-10-02] We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Dole crack mirror
by Rick Campbell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I put a copy of the stuff that I found at http://www.dole-kemp.org/ at http://www.c2.net/~campbell/www.dole-kemp.org/ Basically, there was very little to the content: a couple of pages and a few images. The link to the Clinton-Core page was through http://www.dole-kemp.com/ (Note .com rather than .org) where one of the links there redirects immediately to http://www.cg96.org/new/index2.htm -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMliJARj0UvMeUesFAQHW6QP/QL/P49brEIS7Hmw2myu4gL0fikL8Y1dW 03RO2a8IbBZVcN9FPA8FKlcDg5rApvquO83c930Wdihy1Lt1ot28Jlu0wrb1TExk paTWfmFG2kkRf66HvBbW5HYxdDPBUhv6X+WW+TztuLgtau/8p6TB67gyH84QBiYz kExTNxnu/54= =8gCv -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Rick Campbell <campbell(a)c2.net> ``One of the symptoms of an approaching http://www.c2.net/~campbell/ nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.'' - Bertrand Russel

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Re: EUB_low
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> in the world, 24 hours a day. A U.S. official said, "The > bank is being investigated for violating U.S. laws with > open solicitations on the Net, which is at best for tax > evasion and at worst for money laundering." > I hate to tell the Feds but the internet is more of an international publication than "High Life" (the BA inflight mag) or the BBC World Service mag (whatever it's name is these days. International publications can advertize offshore accounts and investments. DCF

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

17 Dec '03

Tim Maysits at his terminal dressed in five-inch stiletto heels, fishnet stockings, a gold-lame mini-skirt, a purple halter with girdle underneath to keep in his flabby gut, A Fredericks of Hollywood padded bra also underneath the halter, a cheap Naomi Sims pink afro wig, waiting to yank his crank whenever a black man responds to one of his posts.

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