- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: Free Speech and List Topics
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:17 AM 9/2/96, qut wrote: >About the need for limits for anonymity, guess what brought that on? >Crime? Yes! The crime of the media monopoly violating the anti-trust >acts, because people are ignorant enough to trust the mass media for >their news. No self-respecting Cypherpunk thinks the Antitrust Act and related acts are worthy of enforcement. (Think of how the technology we support will tend to allow new avenues for price collusion, interlocking directorates, new forms of business combines, unreadable secure communications with foreign competitors, and so on, all things the Antitrust regulators are already growing worried about.) --Tim May 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, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Encourage Singapore To Come Out Of the Stone Age
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:06 AM 9/2/96 +0800, James Seng <jseng(a)pobox.org.sg> wrote: >Just let to add my comment in regard to this unforuntate discusssion. >To understand the sitution better, you should not impose America >idealogy and perspection on how things to be done to Singapore. >Singapore maybe young but there are certain culture too. While Tim's article title was clearly intended to be provocative, I think the most unfortunate thing about this discussion is that we need to have it at all. Any government, or any individual thug, that would impose violence on people for saying things that would bring it into disrespect deserves no respect at all. Any government that claims to have the god-like wisdom to dictate what's best for its subjects to hear or what religious ideas to believe doesn't deserve to be listened to, much less obeyed. If Singapore's government and religious leaders want to say "Our ideas are better than American ideas", and you or I or your neighbor want to listen to them, fine; maybe some of their ideas are better than some of the many ideas floating around North America. But if you or I or your neighbor want to listen to competing ideas, and even to believe and talk about competing ideas, neither you nor the government have the right to stop them - only to refute them with better ideas. People like Tim and I aren't upset only because we believe that we know better than you and Lee Kwan Yew how to run Singapore; free speech is often threatened here in the US and especially Canada. You mentioned movie ratings - they were invented here partly to avoid the threat of government censorship. A few years ago a prominent right-wing religious/political leader, Jerry Falwell, put out a "Bill Of Rights For American Families" that included the right not to hear offensive foreign ideas like Communism. I agree that Singapore and America have different cultures; in an environment of free speech, if Singaporeans don't like American TV and movies, they won't watch them, and advertisers will quickly figure this out and try to find TV programs they like. On the other hand, if a power-hungry government decides that it doesn't like American TV, forbids business licenses to anyone who broadcasts it, and jails anyone who broadcasts TV without a business license, they're more corrupt than a government that forbids business licenses to anyone who doesn't pay a bribe. (At least in a kleptocracy, you can usually print or say what you want if you pay the bribes, though my father-in-law's newspaper was once shut down for printing that the mayor was taking bribes, and who they were from, and how much.) >In addition, you need to see the method of censorship deployed in >Singapore. For press media like papers and magazine, it is done in a >passive manner. They _do not_ read every issue of every magazine available >in Singapore. They only do so when there is enough complains. This also means you don't know what is safe to print and what isn't. You have to restrict yourself very strongly, because otherwise some politically influential person will complain to the government, and you go to jail. At least if the government tells you what the rules are, you know it's safe to say things that don't violate them. >One more point. They know it is impossible to censor everything. [....] >his reasoning is "how many people can do it? 10%? 5%? That's fine with us. >If the people really wans it, they can get it". Interesting. I don't know if this is good or bad, but at least they're realistic. It also means that if enough people want information badly enough, the government may know not to censor it. On the other hand, a government that can keep the leader of an opposition political party in jail for years just because he opposes them is pretty corrupt. >if you wish to rebuke the points which i mention above, please feel >free to do so but do so in the context wrt Singapore culture. >Do not impose the general idealogy and culture within >your country into your argument. The right to speak freely without government thugs shutting you down and throwing you in jail or killing you is a universal one. The ability to get anybody to listen to what you have to say, on the other hand, is highly dependent both on general culture and on the interests of the individuals you hope will listen, as well as on what you have to say and your ability to say it well. >Now, what makes you think that citizen of Country A has the power or >rights to tell politicians of Country B what to do and what they cannot do? >Just wondering. Because I have a mouth and a conscience, and they have ears and consciences. I certainly have more right to tell a politician in Country B not to stop his subjects from speaking than he does to order them not to speak. And if the politicians over here are wrong, which they often are, you've got the right to tell them that too. Of course, the politicians over here usually won't listen to you, and the politicians over there either won't listen to me or they'll add my name to the firewall killfile :-) But it's also safer for me to tell your politicians to behave well than for you to tell them, since you have to live with them. >ps: Sorry for the off-topic discussion. It's not off-topic. Building tools to prevent censorship is distinctly on-topic for cypherpunks, and an occasional digression into whether it's a good idea is worthwhile. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> Reassign Authority!

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free speech online
by patrickbc＠juno.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I agree that their should be free speech on the net. Someone should start a petition and get as many people to sign it as possible.

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Re: Pseudonym server: Jenaer Anonymous Service
by lutz＠as-node.jena.thur.de 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

* stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com wrote: > Jenaer Anonymous Service <anon(a)as-node.jena.thur.de> > looks like a high-security pseudonym server. Thanks. > rather than having it arrive directly. But in return, > it's pretty secure, since you can only get caught if the > remailer or its operator are compromised when you request a delivery. It's strongly recomment to use a reply server to forward your requests to. The server sends all outgoing messages via mixmaster chains. (mixmaster(a)as-node.jena.thur.de can is always the first one in the chain). The policy of this remailer urges the user to send incoming jobs only via mixmaster chains. It may be changed to drop incoming jobs which does not come from the local mixmaster silently. > I haven't yet checked if how flexible it is about the location > of Reply-To: in the headers, since some mailers make it difficult > to paste that in. Reply-To: is neccessary to be included in the encrypted message body. All readable header informations execpt Subject: {help,send} is drop to /dev/null including the To:, From:, Sender:, Path:, Reply-To: ... lines. > The public key for the server is signed by Lutz.Donnerhacke(a)Jena.Thur.De, > which is in turn signed by 0x3B7F286D, which MIT thinks is an unknown > signator... 0x3B7F286D is the key of Winfried Mueller, the maintainer and autor of Religio, an information system anout religious subjects. A lot of documents fight against Scientology. Try http://Www.thur.de/religio/. Type Bits/KeyID Date User ID pub 2048/39F37F5D 1996/04/25 Lutz Donnerhacke <Lutz.Donnerhacke(a)Jena.Thur.De> Lutz Donnerhacke <lutz(a)dana.de> -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6.3i mQENAzGACKIAAAEIAMSu8OdG/ZNUiN1qc/eobx53oCeOW3iaxWIrK3q9XgBfzHwy AuwumYmL+mgCFnP7jkmk0Y4mst6UszujK+mplzuqzCox+7mUhBl0swQQ/0Bqg8HX 0lm0oYoTnQoeUMcoqCGcj1PbO8Gm40nlXj6wKHzhWQfIVkvhyzUODEhu/Pr0mf9V PtjVoWya8qD+LleM6u8GHsGP2bfERUfFDr6cmdtbUg24U/lsenYzzE5kW1VUyFqK YqRGJoDy1ZQlXIgVG6wULdNcJ96Vc2tEMRMWASvxxS9BJORUC0nRAE6sqBKXiQ93 +x06J3xEaSuCVv9DxyFl8HIQzOtzCdxwOTnzf10ABRG0MEx1dHogRG9ubmVyaGFj a2UgPEx1dHouRG9ubmVyaGFja2VASmVuYS5UaHVyLkRlPokBFQMFEDG9XE/4w3ah osUXSQEBgeoH/iA1uhqU3RsqebIgJquaTB2e5m9NfZdD108ctmhbf191IodV+Doz oWAp9GH9PMhD/vEERoiuwNJCGGCUDooaRXR4ZRh6I8Tb4D+C53uiPqaNKdzjaZTi gQ3I/odRwpoggWqr5d8SjIG4Hf5ERB39wdMSrzmHpXYJJRdLvVh9tYFhmS1islDB vAUxAVlnWKk1vLkbn4cSuIrZL53HQ60fBfcK9MVAPelHhi4jh1J3JN8NJk8bsht6 lx5BfdygLN5Mn4FEQ0JveH2kH2xmSoQvHuAjo1YzBJePOoyJgfJ/QcwNx7ZAcewC HvaogTeALtt0n11q67/1PNOq3/5D+CMqB8iJAJUDBRAxgT1EYH38Rzt/KG0BATIr BACijD0IjjePaO0ZVU2zk+OChpXmztf512PwIf6nRcdlOC+DtoK/EusXJoUx2lmb 8M8sJiaN9PgCOj21QfbpkEcyCCXdKfpBvtj5g73OruJdSCFV+O9Pts8jEqlTK+zo we/Rqr/Nd08Sh0dkQ8E0hlpUVgQkGUiBs5T8LNSeV9G8LIkBFQMFEDGACKMJ3HA5 OfN/XQEB/+QH/20sSVx0VZyv6bbX4t37dd8uY0ZmY7ZxAkwTFZD9wgmcpCQ11cTY 2ZiAKZFheSo4HirBtdKKmW9jMl2GuOs/yDT3JUEcFLSdsFEeqy3EzDYCpJDlm+pV Vd1BidO3phnt6mqbHoKVbwD0+SL6ZxvRzUscnLL3fEDuIepJ4RGlTH6K8cfooDi3 AI6SBPlphO92ZEeVYs/MRCziwhyYHBAZ3ldJJR23V2vlRaB8LO/UhtcZ8aAHXBi2 XbML4sI4qVqvWEeDLe42lAEmlzgm9zzzvjeBHUe2h8kUU/p0KWhnBbRBDLIuoY4Z lEogVqB2bzYFZ17IWQtsy7VS7X9IcxERg6m0H0x1dHogRG9ubmVyaGFja2UgPGx1 dHpAZGFuYS5kZT6JARUDBRAxhoKJCdxwOTnzf10BAS90CACENM1MPBE4vg9sm7Bq t7PyUCrO4z0ZGjiVQhAe1e2nzXAWqYbNhg7tpla/eekG146KBq9h7KFd2v3qApyR cosse0KUiuLEiCNne7wnwgHpe0+g5DEMmqqqkInaErxyDLEa12YVcwWkaESQyJD8 B5pgRyf4G1SuDRnhOL1VY3SaZeo8trzwWWFLapPI4Qy6vzm2/LdtprL52pFuTD3J f591mHnnIo3FsYEuMBJUxFYw91dO2RfqSQmqCnR7v4B5IE2OElXZZy8co2rHy969 2IM32oJyRJVbj/U3M+EqOSvhsFmqU6muEUkfvNyknyCGyt1hdATSb4QzwPdMKXRC YTRi =LDb+ -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- > Because you don't get your reply email until you ask to pick it up, > it does seem easy to abuse; complaints, flames, and mailbombs won't reach you > if you don't ask for them. I hope the operator doesn't mind the workload > of managing the remailer - it looks like a good service, and with > Julf's remailer shut down, we need more nymservers. Sure. My nymserver is completely written as a bash script. -- | Lutz Donnerhacke +49/3641/380259 voice, -60 ISDN, -61 V.34 und Fax |

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Undeliverable Message
by MAILER-DAEMON＠mqg-smtp3.usmc.mil 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To: <cypherpunks(a)toad.com> Cc: Subject: Re: It is good that anon.penet.fi has been closed! Message not delivered to recipients below. Press F1 for help with VNM error codes. VNM3043: BANYAN SERVER@MAG26@2DMAW NEW RIVER VNM3043 -- MAILBOX IS FULL The message cannot be delivered because the recipient's mailbox contains the maximum number of messages, as set by the system administrator. The recipient must delete some messages before any other messages can be delivered. The maximum message limit for a user's mailbox is 10,000. The default message limit is 1000 messages. Administrators can set message limits using the Mailbox Settings function available in the Manage User menu (MUSER). When a user's mailbox reaches the limit, the user must delete some of the messages before the mailbox can accept any more incoming messages. UNDEFINED-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Sun, 1 Sep 1996, Igor Chudov @ home wrote: > I believe that Private Idaho is a cypherpunks remailer client for Windows. True. But it is a seperate program from email clients which means that anyone wanting to use Private Idaho has to download it, install it, and learn how to use it in conjunction with one's email program. Most people who may have a need for anonymity have probably never heard of PGP or Private Idaho. I think that until remailer functions are actually built into the programs that people use, remailer use will be rare. - -- Mark PGP encrypted mail prefered. Key fingerprint = d61734f2800486ae6f79bfeb70f95348 http://www.voicenet.com/~markm/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3 Charset: noconv iQEVAwUBMipNqizIPc7jvyFpAQFy0Qf+LbMgy3PBJ+ipGbxblKbjEm09aiziLEpD p7JCudf6TrBUdF+2PwTdxK/sOCITE9lTwbycAgeCvEYNUJEbsR3a6ix5fxbQuF8p Y9/tEbLVESUz0/+UthVnBasbFsCOzHV+ztlIRIk8SEEJKxsu8cNRZqcjaAqH5Q1A dmBKZ9KGQWPNuc5oLfqahyzroa8kAG59HSDm+ntV9fwduKNi8wSV6WFmA2s9pnZa +yRRXmSm4PkWVXgNdQCosTTcD1enSIBcH2WAQu1jpDZbbs6+6v1KvdPa5+WOvTs3 kpBfFBlsmVkWJS63ouqDb7yihoq/qZvhyE2Fske8uVYh9M5Ffn9AKg== =md6D -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Undeliverable Message
by MAILER-DAEMON＠mqg-smtp3.usmc.mil 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To: <cypherpunks(a)toad.com> Cc: Subject: Re: DON'T Nuke Singapore Back into the Stone Age Message not delivered to recipients below. Press F1 for help with VNM error codes. VNM3043: BANYAN SERVER@MAG26@2DMAW NEW RIVER VNM3043 -- MAILBOX IS FULL The message cannot be delivered because the recipient's mailbox contains the maximum number of messages, as set by the system administrator. The recipient must delete some messages before any other messages can be delivered. The maximum message limit for a user's mailbox is 10,000. The default message limit is 1000 messages. Administrators can set message limits using the Mailbox Settings function available in the Manage User menu (MUSER). When a user's mailbox reaches the limit, the user must delete some of the messages before the mailbox can accept any more incoming messages. UNDEFINED-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Mon, 2 Sep 1996, James Seng wrote: > Now, what makes you think that citizen of Country A has the power or > rights to tell politicians of Country B what to do and what they cannot do? > Just wondering. I have every right as a citizen of country A to tell politicians of country B what they should or shouldn't do. This isn't about American Ideology; it's about natural rights. Politicians of country B can refuse to listen to me or attempt to prevent my corrupt ideas from polluting the minds of its citizens, but they won't succeed very well with the latter. Of course, politicians may be satisfied with making sure that only the most determined citizens will be able to access information they don't want citizens to access, but as technology progresses, it will become much more difficult to prevent this information from spreading to the masses. > > ps: Sorry for the off-topic discussion. Cpunks is certainly not the best place to be discussing free speech. However, the link between free speech and the spread of cryptographic technology is too close to completely overlook. - -- Mark PGP encrypted mail prefered. Key fingerprint = d61734f2800486ae6f79bfeb70f95348 http://www.voicenet.com/~markm/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3 Charset: noconv iQEVAwUBMipSASzIPc7jvyFpAQFYyAgAuy7FvTpGHqYHi9zw3FMiea2tLnYVWPU6 D6VrGvN5NxRtTE8yW3eKrc1iU/0jQIVxHtUhHcodbPfvGqEtwuZKKbbknNj5GmzS pmhcYPguXDwlXL4m3IjxEvhPg7GZ7tjbhXlPK7ADu0EHxvjwesAcrKyCPddu0i9U e83bo3Q4vBT75WPVpSI1i6jJmC7ql4s3GZVvP2Qf6hzvu9fwSKbAra0ZLBFVKf25 WKwNK2eTVBcQOYytwXOQmdSV/hgFB/Y2T6+PHgnAjaDVeX3WqUuxggk6DpBY2V8g bORwsuZyweJviVZIOjbLx6RDeNJQWWSjUCojHvJyKzqffg23Fi8bAw== =+23m -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: It is good that anon.penet.fi has been closed!
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In a challenging article posted 12:33 PM 9/1/96 -0500, ichudov(a)algebra.com (Igor Chudov) wrote: >Yes, subject says it all. anon.penet.fi was a whole lot worse than >cypherpunks remailers. It provided clueless users with no real security, >because it stored return addresses and did not use chaining and >encryption. There are different reasons people use remailers, different amounts of security they need, and different levels of security that the remailers can provide. Anon.penet.fi was a Good Thing. It got a few hundred thousand people thinking about remailers, and why they want them, and thinking they were good tools. It helped the public learn that anonymity is useful for real people, and helped the public learn that they can't always believe an email message is from the "person" on the From: line, and that email and news postings aren't always authentic just because they come out of a computer :-) One way to provide privacy is through heavy mathematics; for some people, and some threats, you need that. Another way to provide privacy is through a trusted operator who's willing to put up with a lot of crap to provide the service. For many people, that's enough - not for people worried about eavesdroppers and overthrowing governments, but enough for people talking about their attitudes toward work and sex and drugs who don't want their email traced by their employers, nosy neighbors, or local vice cops. And part of this security is the willingness to close down a popular service when it's security is threatened. One feature that's really needed for many remailer applications is reply addresses. Doing that securely with cypherpunks-style remailers is hard; doing it securely with trusted-sysop remailers is much easier, and even then there were occasional bugs, and plain surprises. In general, anything that knows the return path is vulnerable; if the person sending the reply knows the destination address, which doesn't apply to many of the applications, the remailer system in between can be secure, but otherwise you're not "truly secure" - only "pretty good". Knowing what the users really want to do helps you do it more securely. >From what I know of remailer history, the main original goal of the cypherpunks-style remailer was to provide security against traffic analysis by eavesdroppers, rather than to prevent the recipient from knowing the sender's address, though everybody pretty quickly realized that the latter was an interesting feature, especially coupled with posting to Usenet. Learning the differences between what people will really do with 2-way remailers as opposed to 1-way remailers can be done better with an easy-to-use 2-way remailer like penet.fi which can get 500,000 (possibly duplicated) users than with moderately complicated systems like alpha.c2.org or the really complicated things that may be needed to get better security. >Maybe closing of anon.penet.fi will spur real interest from the unwashed >alt.sex.* masses to the truly secure remailers. Who knows; maybe the most effective way to fund "truly secure" (bwah-hah-ha) remailers will turn out to be to carry phone sex advertising :-) Or maybe somebody will build a decent digicash interface to a remailer, which will help get digicash going now that everybody who uses remailers will be looking for a new home. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> Reassign Authority!

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Re: It is good that anon.penet.fi has been closed!
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In a challenging article posted 12:33 PM 9/1/96 -0500, ichudov(a)algebra.com (Igor Chudov) wrote: >Yes, subject says it all. anon.penet.fi was a whole lot worse than >cypherpunks remailers. It provided clueless users with no real security, >because it stored return addresses and did not use chaining and >encryption. There are different reasons people use remailers, different amounts of security they need, and different levels of security that the remailers can provide. Anon.penet.fi was a Good Thing. It got a few hundred thousand people thinking about remailers, and why they want them, and thinking they were good tools. It helped the public learn that anonymity is useful for real people, and helped the public learn that they can't always believe an email message is from the "person" on the From: line, and that email and news postings aren't always authentic just because they come out of a computer :-) One way to provide privacy is through heavy mathematics; for some people, and some threats, you need that. Another way to provide privacy is through a trusted operator who's willing to put up with a lot of crap to provide the service. For many people, that's enough - not for people worried about eavesdroppers and overthrowing governments, but enough for people talking about their attitudes toward work and sex and drugs who don't want their email traced by their employers, nosy neighbors, or local vice cops. And part of this security is the willingness to close down a popular service when it's security is threatened. One feature that's really needed for many remailer applications is reply addresses. Doing that securely with cypherpunks-style remailers is hard; doing it securely with trusted-sysop remailers is much easier, and even then there were occasional bugs, and plain surprises. In general, anything that knows the return path is vulnerable; if the person sending the reply knows the destination address, which doesn't apply to many of the applications, the remailer system in between can be secure, but otherwise you're not "truly secure" - only "pretty good". Knowing what the users really want to do helps you do it more securely. >From what I know of remailer history, the main original goal of the cypherpunks-style remailer was to provide security against traffic analysis by eavesdroppers, rather than to prevent the recipient from knowing the sender's address, though everybody pretty quickly realized that the latter was an interesting feature, especially coupled with posting to Usenet. Learning the differences between what people will really do with 2-way remailers as opposed to 1-way remailers can be done better with an easy-to-use 2-way remailer like penet.fi which can get 500,000 (possibly duplicated) users than with moderately complicated systems like alpha.c2.org or the really complicated things that may be needed to get better security. >Maybe closing of anon.penet.fi will spur real interest from the unwashed >alt.sex.* masses to the truly secure remailers. Who knows; maybe the most effective way to fund "truly secure" (bwah-hah-ha) remailers will turn out to be to carry phone sex advertising :-) Or maybe somebody will build a decent digicash interface to a remailer, which will help get digicash going now that everybody who uses remailers will be looking for a new home. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> Reassign Authority!

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Educating former anon.penet.fi users about other remailers
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've gotten about 5 messages from daemon(a)anon.penet.fi telling me that the remailer is closed; don't know if they're from various previous identities, or if they're from postings to mailing lists with anonymous people on them, or whatever. If somebody were to put together a one-page note on other remailers, would it make sense to send it to all the penet.fi users? A canonical cypherpunks approach would be to just write one and send it to na000001(a)anon.penet.fi ..... na600000(a)anon.penet.fi, but I assume either my system or Julf's would decide it was spam and discard it (even if it were split up into 60,000 10-message chunks.) The press release on www.penet.fi does contain pointers to the FAQs, but people have to go looking for that. On the other hand, if there are an extra 10,000 hits per day on alpha.c2.org because of a really well-written one-page blurb, can it handle the load? # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> Reassign Authority!

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Re: Encourage Singapore To Come Out Of the Stone Age
by James Seng 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:29 PM 9/1/96 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote: >bring it into disrespect deserves no respect at all. Any government >that claims to have the god-like wisdom to dictate what's best for >its subjects to hear or what religious ideas to believe doesn't >deserve to be listened to, much less obeyed. If Singapore's government >and religious leaders want to say "Our ideas are better than American >ideas", and you or I or your neighbor want to listen to them, fine; I think you have misunderstood my posting. I never say Singapore ideas are better than American ideas. What i am saying is that Asian (Singapore) values are _DIFFERENT_ from western (America) values. [i know i am generalising] When you look at the laws and regulation. You cannot just look at what you think is best. You have to look at other things. Culture, social and economical structure, religion and history. In every aspect, Singapore (or most Asian for that matter) are different. Thus, you cannot judge a Singapore government action based on your social background. My purpose of posting is to hope to bring some light to the people here about some social norm in Singapore, hopefully to explain why the government choose to block certain WWW and yet was not strongly opposited here. Secondly, you do not need to convience me. I agree with you totally. What you have to convience is the general population here, against the culture, the society and everything. >maybe some of their ideas are better than some of the many ideas >floating around North America. But if you or I or your neighbor >want to listen to competing ideas, and even to believe and talk about >competing ideas, neither you nor the government have the right to >stop them - only to refute them with better ideas. Nope. I am open to ideas which is why i been watching to this thread. I find it is rather constructive to see how people think about Singapore and then compare it with my own ideas. However, i also know it is useless to have continue discussion with fanatic as they have a tendancy to distored what you say to suit their argument. Nor are they particular open minded to listen to others like our dear Tim has clearly shown us. This is why i am responsing to your article and not his. >On the other hand, if a power-hungry government decides that it doesn't >like American TV, forbids business licenses to anyone who broadcasts it, >and jails anyone who broadcasts TV without a business license, >they're more corrupt than a government that forbids business licenses to >anyone who doesn't pay a bribe. (At least in a kleptocracy, >you can usually print or say what you want if you pay the bribes, >though my father-in-law's newspaper was once shut down for printing >that the mayor was taking bribes, and who they were from, and how much.) Sad to say, Singapore government does have a lot of power. But i am glad what you mention isnt happening in Singapore. I havent heard of any serious corruption cases or people accepting bribes etc. Nor does the people here feel a suppressed nor are there general disatifaction. I think you are too influenced with the persepection from 1984. *8) All things works both ways. Power is no otherwise. >This also means you don't know what is safe to print and what isn't. >You have to restrict yourself very strongly, because otherwise >some politically influential person will complain to the government, >and you go to jail. At least if the government tells you what >the rules are, you know it's safe to say things that don't violate them. You dont go to jail for writing articles. You might be sue for deframation if you published something untrue (similar to your civil lawsuit i guess?) and have to pay large sum of money to the person but you dont go to jail. And yes, they are telling the people what _are_ the things now so you know what to avoid. >It also means that if enough people want information badly enough, >the government may know not to censor it. On the other hand, >a government that can keep the leader of an opposition political party >in jail for years just because he opposes them is pretty corrupt. I am not interested in politics so i didnt really know what is happening in that case. for that, i have no comment. >The right to speak freely without government thugs shutting you down >and throwing you in jail or killing you is a universal one. >The ability to get anybody to listen to what you have to say, >on the other hand, is highly dependent both on general culture >and on the interests of the individuals you hope will listen, >as well as on what you have to say and your ability to say it well. Very true. So does the First Amendment said. Singapore does have such similar law as First Amendment which is slight "modified". You have freedom of speech as long as your comments does not endanger religious/racist harmony and national security. (I do not know the exact term..need a lawyer for that..). The reasons for this are for historical reasons which trace back. >Because I have a mouth and a conscience, and they have ears and consciences. >I certainly have more right to tell a politician in Country B not to >stop his subjects from speaking than he does to order them not to speak. >And if the politicians over here are wrong, which they often are, >you've got the right to tell them that too. Of course, the politicians >over here usually won't listen to you, and the politicians over there >either won't listen to me or they'll add my name to the firewall killfile :-) >But it's also safer for me to tell your politicians to behave well than >for you to tell them, since you have to live with them. Fair enough. Point taken and you are right. I was able to say that you are not the one who are going to vote for/against them in the next election. *8) >It's not off-topic. Building tools to prevent censorship is >distinctly on-topic for cypherpunks, and an occasional digression into >whether it's a good idea is worthwhile. Perhaps but not to the other thousand of other cypherpunk subscribers. With this, i hope i have explained any misunderstanding with the previous posting. If you wish to carried on with this discussion, please feel feel to email me directly. -James Seng

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