- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Dumb question (Re: RSA T-Shirt)
by George T. Talbot 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sorry to bother the entire list with this...anybody got the e-mail address of the USA seller of the 3-lines of Perl RSA T-Shirt? I haven't received mine yet and I can't find the e-mail address. Again...Sorry for adding to the traffic. ---------- George T. Talbot <george(a)phat.com>

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Re: First known purchase of physical goods with cyberbucks
by Matt Thomlinson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

don't forget GhostMarks! :) matt ---------- From: Timothy C. May <tcmay(a)got.net> To: "Marcel van der Peijl" <bigmac(a)digicash.com>; <mark(a)unicorn.com> Cc: <cypherpunks(a)toad.com>; <ecm(a)ai.mit.edu>; <steve(a)webmedia.com> Subject: Re: First known purchase of physical goods with cyberbucks Date: Thursday, August 17, 1995 11:59AM At 6:39 PM 8/17/95, Marcel van der Peijl wrote: >> Anyway, if anyone knows of an earlier transaction of cyberbucks for physical >> goods than this (at 15:00 GMT 17th August 1995), then please let me know. > >As far as I know, the first transaction took place when I (while >testing) bought a postcard from GlobalX, the first ecash store to >open besides our own (and mine). It is stored in the 'DigiCash >museum' next to early prototypes of all kinds of smartcards, >emulators, wallets etc. > >This must have been around October last year (or August? Can't make >out the postmark). Hundreds of cards were shipped by several shops, >and stickers, lotteries, etc. Check the 'physical objects' section >on http://www.digicash.com/shops/categorical.html > >Maybe you should restrict the 'first known' claim to 'first known >purchase of physical goods with cyberbucks traded at the ECM'. > >Sorry! Also, there are other potential claims for this sort of thing. Based on varying extents to which the "electronic money" is really secure, is cryptographically interesting, etc. For example, more than two years ago on this list (I think it was spring of '93, but it could've been spring of '94) there were a flurry of transactions involving the "MagicMoney" and "TackyTokens" of Pr0ductCypher and others. I recall Black Unicorn and others talking about transactional exchanges involving sixpacks of beer or soft drinks. I could check my archives, but you get the point. And before that, there were "HExmarks" being used on the Extropians list. There was a nominal conversion rate to real dollars, and at the time I left that list, I had more HExmarks than anyone else. And dozens of token-based systems, coupons, LETS systems, etc. Not to mention the various commercial smartcards and "e money" systems. Granted, most of these are not "Chaumian," which is what most of us think of us as digital cash. Claiming credit for being first is a tough issue. --Tim May ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net (Got net?) | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-728-0152 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Corralitos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Netscape
by David E. Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- To: llurch(a)networking.stanford.edu, cypherpunks(a)toad.com Date: Sun Jul 21 22:19:11 1996 > > The government has yet to enforce ITAR. The only thing they have been doing > > is threatening companies who make products with strong crypto. If anyone was > > ever actually put on trial for a violation of ITAR, it would almost > certainly > > be found to be unconstitutional. > > So do it. None of this anonymous bullshit, or trying to drag Netscape > into > it. > > I'd donate whatever I could to a Cypherpunk Legal Defense Fund. We only > need > one volunteer with a lot of time on his/her hands. > > -rich > Could be fun. I haven't been in a lawsuit in quite a while (i.e. never). I'd love to spend some time in court, as a thought exercise and a token claim to fame. I'll be uploading something to hacktic as soon as I can get into Netscape's server to download it myself :) dave - ---- David E. Smith POB 324 Cape Girardeau MO USA 63702 dsmith(a)prairienet.org http://www.prairienet.org/~dsmith send mail of 'send pgp-key' subject for my PGP public key "If a train station is where a train stops ... ... then just what is a workstation?" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Automagically signed with Pronto Secure for Windows. iQEVAwUBMfLzOTVTwUKWHSsJAQGEfAf/Su1LVpvIzhwuFKtMbR3j38gB+HnRjfvs /yveJSWh5q+KooVHUvaKdkRwGFvs3Q/xpBaxnUTiZqsdpRcbAh6uKC/w8mYAe/Vt GuaZl/eIz7FGRk5IF/yY691/R2yknxdujDSuzw5B+r9YJBvRqO5sCWbBfJFkElR0 3hDEy6PXddG69ujN+OYiqTAbgatee0jIycAZg5lYl45JVaNer0GcrJtNWqzfyMnI 5c91JAg/raOclYZPHqqNjqUqi1oTY+ItSeVgZ3QpBIs1ggG5wADG1uLsQZh4W6jn e93PFYXJWC4AzNYxLIuI/eMj22yCn7d2EEniwH6gtmRK/k5oBiuOvA== =hz7e -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Changing to Moderated Cypherpunks -- How?
by James F. Marshall 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Too much noise in the unedited list. How does one change to the moderated list? - -- James F. Marshall, Esq., Pasadena, California Subject "JFM Public Key" for PGP Public Key - -- OS/2 is to Windows as Stradivarius is to Yamaha -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBNNf8UjbjGennrhqZAQETXgP/WFshRowrhi7qMnUZHUIADA7cCV0fEYFA WiAlynovwU9dyvc/gygz9N6aeJO/ghqiQl2/NqCSsKn5H1nTr1MHbK2iYJwt6AXh ZhMSfz5p1QzVWwm9lIFETipPayuJ+WzCkaakMZP3PPZXG8XUT/48NZG5hJgjfIM7 vqzMkCcHr+A= =2N5t -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Fwd: Big Brother Sees through walls (from the spyking list)
by Information Security 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: sunder <sunder(a)brainlink.com> > > 1)From: "George Martin" <gmartin(a)kic.or.jp> > Subject: News Release: High-Tech Surveillance > > Here's a sampling of how state and federal agencies are using this > terrifying technology to spy on Americans: > > * In North Carolina, county governments use high-resolution spy satellite > photographs to search for property improvements that might increase > property tax assessments. Was this cost authorized by taxpayers? > * On the Mexican border, police use a "gamma ray scanner" to check > tanker trucks for contraband, scanning right through the vehicle's metal > sides. Good!!! CM excerpt: # Those rumor-level stories about our government encouraging # drugs to reach the inner cities were weird. # # Remember, we've been having a Drug War for four decades now. # # I guess there is a certain logic to it. Obviously the government is into # hysteria on the matter: it is then possible that they would want to continue # having a drug problem so they could continue the hysteria. # # Even the Attorney General was drooling over drug forfeiture dollars, to the # point of shunting aside other cases. # # # Recently... # # : CBS 60 Minutes, Steve Croft reporting. # : # : Remember that story of the hero customs agent snagging a tanker truck full # : of cocaine? There is a strange twist to the story. # : # : The Federal agent's manager repeatedly tried to interfere with him making # : the bust. # : # : The agent's dog had flagged the truck; the agent weighed it and found a # : discrepancy. His manager said it must be in the tires. You can only check # : the tires for drugs he was told. # : # : But the agent persisted, and made the bust. His manager let the driver # : of the truck leave. The driver literally fled on foot back to Mexico. # # What the hell was that about??? # # Was it a single corrupt Federal agent? # # : CBS 60 Minutes, Steve Croft reporting. # : # : Standing at a fence about a hundred feet from the U.S. Customs lanes, # : Steve Croft and an ex-agent with a walkie-talkie tuned to the right # : frequency began videotaping the border crossings. # : # : Truck after truck drove right through the individual Customs lanes, # : not even stopping. "Nafta express lanes" explained the ex-agent. # : # : Truck after truck drove straight into the U.S. unmonitored. # : # : Then a message came through the walkie-talkie: "We got some cameras # : watching, better get out there and cover traffic". # : # : Suddenly several Customs agents came out of the booths and started # : inspecting trucks. # # That makes at least five people at a minimum! # # What the hell is going on??? # # # IF the rumor is true, THIS looks like it would be the smoking gun. # # How did our country get so twisted around that they can invade our # bodies to drug test, yet allow truck after truck after truck to # just wander right in knowing HUGE drug shipment after HUGE drug # shipment is crossing? Gosh, there's no drug problem with Mexican # police, military and even their president. # # * The New York Times, February 19 1997 # * # * Brig. General Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, Mexico's top Military Drug War # * point man, was arrested on charges of receiving payoffs from Jaurez # * cartel kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes, Defense Minister Enrique Cervantes # * announced. # * # * U.S. Drug Czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey had weeks earlier called General # * Gutierrez "a guy of absolute unquestioned integrity." # # # And what if some terrorists wanted to sneak in an atom bomb? # # Put a NAFTA sticker on it and drive right on in, y'all. Welcome to the USA. # # If you want to really be certain, hide the A-bomb in a truck full of cocaine. # # If a terrorist nuclear bomb ever goes off in this country, # it drove in from Mexico. # # Meanwhile, Los Alamos National Laboratories developed technology that # allows an officer walking or driving down the street, as shown on MSNBC TV # 6/9/97 www.TheSite.com, to determine whether anyone on the sidewalk is # carrying a gun. # # The priorities are all out of whack. # # Apply Military technology towards securing the border, not by spending # billions and billions and billions each year to secure each and every # one of us. # # We don't put governing-monitors on all car engines to control speeding. # Get an Operations Research clue. # # # Is our government perpetuating the availability of drugs? # # The 60 Minutes report sure makes it look like it is. # # How could letting unchecked Mexican truck after unchecked Mexican truck # through not be? # # ! FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, Senate Judiciary Committee, June 4, 1997 # ! # ! NEW CORRIDORS HAVE OPENED TO CONTINUE THE FLOOD OF DRUGS INTO AMERICA. # # No shit, Sherlock! Ya don't nafta say another word. # # Every single truck can be checked using Military technology. # # But no, massive monitoring of people suspected of no crime is the # appropriate response. # # They were just warming us up for the CALEA telephone monitoring bill. # # ---- # # Here is part of the story on why we let trucks full of cocaine and # heroin just roll right into the United States. # # * "Diminished U.S. Role Below Border Plays Into Traffickers' Hands" # * # * By Molly Moore and John Ward Anderson # * Washington Post Foreign Service # * Sunday, September 8 1996; Page A01 # * The Washington Post # * # * Due to their new 'Mexicanization policy': # * Mexico became the main gateway into the United States for illegal # * narcotics, with the amount of cocaine making the journey climbing to # * an estimated 210 tons last year. # * # * Mexico's drug arrests plunged nearly 65 percent, from 27,369 the year # * before the policy changes to 9,728 last year, according to data that # * the Mexican government supplied to the State Department. # * # * Cocaine seizures in Mexico were cut in half, dropping from more than # * 50 tons in 1993 to slightly more than 24 tons in each of the last two # * years -- the smallest amounts since 1988, Mexican government figures # * show. # * # * The GAO report charges that Mexico's greatest problem is, in # * fact, the "widespread, endemic corruption" throughout its law # * enforcement agencies. Earlier this month, in an indictment of his own # * department, Attorney General Lozano fired 737 members of his federal # * police force -- 17 percent of his entire corps -- saying they did not # * have "the ethical profile" required for the job. In a recent meeting # * with foreign reporters, Lozano said it could take 15 years to clean up # * the force. # * # * In November 1993, President Clinton signed Presidential Decision Directive # * No. 14, shifting U.S. anti-drug efforts away from intercepting cocaine as # * it passed through Mexico and the Caribbean, and, instead, attacking the # * drug supply at its sources in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru. # # The President himself ordered them to stop checking!!! This is in the same # leadership vein as Reagan declaring himself a "Contra". # # And why did President Clinton change strategy? [snip] > * The Naval Surface Warfare Center has developed an "ion sniffer," > a metal box that analyzes the chemical makeup of the air -- and can detect, > for example, traces of cocaine through the skin days after drug use. Bad. > * In Georgia, the state's Department of Revenue will start using > NASA satellites to examine the state's 58,910 square miles for illegal > timber cutting. Good. > * In New Jersey, California, and other states, police use thermal > imaging devices to scan houses for unusual heat sources that could indicate > indoor marijuana growing operations. Houses can be scanned while police sit > in their cruisers on the street. Bad. CM excerpt: # Here is a more detailed example of how government expands surveillance # (and thus control) in a seemingly never-ending manner...consider this when # talking about a National ID Card: # # Is it okay for the government to look at your property while walking by and # if the officer spots marijuana plants growing to get a search warrant? # # Of course it is. # # * "The Right To Privacy", ISBN 0-679-74434-7, 1997 # * By Attorneys Ellen Alderman and Caroline Kennedy # * # * ...then the Supreme Court ruled that if the yard was big enough that "An # * individual may not legitimately demand privacy for activities conducted # * out of doors in fields," the Court wrote, "except in the area immediately # * surrounding the home." # * # * ...then the Supreme Court ruled that a barn sixty yards from a farmhouse # * was too far away from a house to expect privacy. # * # * ...then the Supreme Court ruled that aerial surveillance did not constitute # * a Fourth Amendment search. # * # * ...then the Supreme Court ruled that a "precision aerial mapping camera" # * that was able to capture objects as small as one-half inch in diameter did # * not constitute a Fourth Amendment search. # # ...then courts ruled that infrared surveillance of homes was permissible. # # # What is this? # # * Subject: Re: Law Enforcement Aviation # * From: aufsj(a)imap2.asu.edu # * Date: 1996/12/27 # * Newsgroups: rec.aviation.military # * # * What interests me is how new technologies will be interpreted. I recently # * inquired at the local Law School about the courts views towards the use # * of impulse radar, and they said "Impulse what the heck?" # * # * Basically it is a radar that "sees through" things (like, say, your # * house). # * # * Their capabilities vary widely, but the feds are already using # * them and I know that Hughes corp. is designing a low-cost set up # * specifically for major police departments. # * # * They are driving towards a unit that can be mounted on a police helicopter. # * # * Will the police need a warrant? Who knows. Since they are allowed # * to do airborne infra-red analysis of your house, why not an take an # * airborne "x-ray" equivalent? # * # * --------------------------------------------------------------------- # * Steven J Forsberg at aufsj(a)imap2.asu.edu Wizard 87-01 > * And in Arizona, the state's Department of Water Resources uses > spy satellite photographs to monitor 750,000 acres of state farmland, and > compares the images to a database to discover which farmers don't have > irrigation permits. Good, I guess. > Even worse: The federal government will spend another $4.5 million > this year to develop even more intrusive surveillance equipment. Bad. > Currently under development by the Justice Department: A "super > x-ray" -- combining traditional x-ray technology, ultra-sound imaging, > and computer-aided metal detectors -- to reveal items hidden under clothes > from up to 60 feet away. Bad. > The courts are currently wrestling with the implications of the new > technology, debating the limits of the government's power to "search" > individuals from a distance with high-tech gadgets. Several contradictory > court decisions have already emerged, for example, about whether > thermal-imaging searches are Constitutional. > > Meanwhile, Republican and Democratic politicians continue to look > for new uses of the technology -- with some government officials already > talking about using satellite surveillance to track items as small as > backyard porches to check for zoning violations and construction permits. Smart cards are transponders. Never forget that. > "In the name of fighting crime, politicians seem eager to obliterate the > protections against unreasonable search, with equipment that Americans used > to only read about in Tom Clancy technothrillers," said Dasbach. "It's time > for the American public to wake up and realize that Big Brother is here > today -- and he's got a gamma ray scanner in his hand." No amount of control over the population is enough for the U.S. Government. ---guy

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I was auto-outed by an IMG tag in HTML spam
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I just had my on-line pseudonym outed to my company's VP of marketing, with potentially serious internecine political consequences. It didn't even take an AOL customer service rep to do the dirty deed. Here's how it happened. I have an account unconnected with work, for personal mail, on a machine run by a friend in my wife's department at the local college. From this account, I speak my mind about my political views, my employer's spamming of their rather loosely defined lists of "customers", etc. I don't do that from my work account because I don't want any confusion about whether I am speaking for the company or not. Evidently my mention of my displeasure with my company's spamming hit a nerve with marketing. They sent a message to my off-site address (along with those of other critics about whom they wanted to know more). It was an HTML message with an embedded IMG tag. Last night about midnight, I downloaded my off-site mail with Netscape. (I was still at work because our team is debugging some killer database problems.) When Netscape saw that IMG tag, it happily connected to marketing's "customer" tracking server, and downloaded the keyed graphic. My boss just let me see the log he got from the marketing VP, showing clearly that my workstation read the message. The log was attached to a strident call for my head from the VP. Luckily, my boss agrees with my attitude, as do all of my co-workers on the engineering side of the house, and thinks I was in the right to use an off-site account. But the political fallout could be interesting. Beware "live" message content. If you don't, you may end up having to get your company's entire marketing force fired to protect yourself. Use mail readers that don't automatically process HTML and connect to image servers, accept cookies, or run javascripts. You are being watched by tricky defective, er, detective types. es.

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Problems of anonymous posts
by nobody＠soda.berkeley.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- (This is from Hal; I still can't post from Portal.) After going to enormous efforts to create a network of anonymous remailers, we are hoist by our own petard, as our list receives strange, irrelevant, and argumentative posts through our own anonymous remailers. (Not all anonymous posts are like this, but there have been quite a few in the last few weeks which fall into these categories.) This should challenge us to reconsider the value of anonymity and remailers. Are we working only to make the net safe for the immature and incoherent? I would say not, but these posts should remind us of how incomplete is the infrastructure needed for successful use of anonymity. A brief recap of the benefits of anonymous mail: presently, on the net, all mail is tagged with the sender and destination. This means that not only the recipient, but any net snoopers and sysops at systems through which the mail passes, may be able to know that person A is sending mail to person B. This kind of information can be used to build up dossiers of who talks to whom. Worse, as we move into an era of electronic commerce, more and more of our lives may begin to take place on the net. We may shop, find entertainment, do business, even work for a living across the network. This will open up even more opportunities for collecting data about how we live our lives. In my opinion, the best way to preserve our privacy is to make it impossible to collect this data. Anonymous remailers, and their cousins, IP bouncers (which perform an analogous function for telnet-type connections), can prevent the collection of this kind of information by hiding exactly who is communicating with whom. These services can serve as the basis for the other privacy-protecting technologies we've been discussing, such as digital cash. There's not much point in using digital cash to prevent tieing customers to vendors if monitoring the net will provide that information anyway. This isn't just a futuristic concern, either. Already today the government is taking steps which could, under some not-so-far-fetched extrapolations, get people on the list in trouble. Many people on this list have communicated with Phil Zimmermann, for example. What if email logs were used to track all those people down, and they became suspects in this criminal investigation that the government seems to be pursuing? It's not even impossible that the government could someday try to paint the cypherpunks themselves as a subversive organization. Think how much more difficult any such diabolical attack would be if people subscribed to the list via remailers, under digital pseudonyms. These days, with the shaky legal status of cryptography, we of all people should be able to see the benefits of anonymous communication. The problem is, then, how to gain the benefits of anonymity, while avoiding the abuses. One solution which we have long discussed is reputations and pseudonyms; another is making people pay to use remailers. The way reputations work is that people would digitally sign their anonymous postings. This way someone could post anonymously and build up a reputation by means of a series of postings signed under the same name. As time went on, they would no more want to damage the reputation of their pseudonym than they would want to damage their reputation under non-anonymous posting. To make this work, people need to be able to easily filter their mail on the basis of the pseudonym it came from, rather than the (irrelevant) anonymous remailer which sent it. Then they can choose to accept and read mail from anonymous posters who have built up a good reputation while ignoring that from those who have ruined their good (pseudo) name. Karl Barrus has done some experiments along these lines. He described some time back a system he had for working with the elm mail reader, one of the most common Unix-based mail agents. The software will display the true originator of PGP-signed posts (anonymous or not). This allows readers to apply the same standards to signed anonymous mail as to regular mail. It raises anonymous posters to the same level, and holds them to the same standards, as other posters. This software could allow anonymous posters to build up their reputations, encouraging more responsibility on their part. The other solution, pay-for-use remailers, has also been pioneered by Karl. His idea is to make the remailer a little harder to use by forcing the user to include some digital postage (based, I think, on what Tim May called "poor man's postage stamps"). This could help reduce the volume of anonymous mail and make it less likely that joke or trivial messages would be posted. (We could even consider applying Karl's approach to the list as a whole; people would have to apply ahead of time for posting tokens in order to post. This might force people to take a little more care and time in their postings.) I don't think Karl's efforts have been sufficiently appreciated here. He is quietly working to create the tools needed to allow anonymity to be a useful and important part of the net architecture rather than the annoying sideshow that it sometimes seems to be becoming. We need to support Karl, work to bring his innovations into other remailers and other mail agents, if we want to gain the benefits from what we have done so far. Hal Finney hfinney(a)shell.portal.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLMFf3qgTA69YIUw3AQEp9QP/UyEvuQgM6GKiKdkZtHJw4/NhMwQDihrs 2D8weSeUQpKHPpxEnXiDEG6qswI0B4auq+hK3EDYIzccA6c6/+0Xa7SzESsujtjs VDRY7BNphAQ8ix6vd4Ti2vuk8sWa7IHasuAF+UytJrUXPaMbJgH1u/84M9HstA4t kNQ3venrgh4= =CFWw -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: ANON: mail concerns
by nobody＠alumni.cco.caltech.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >:: >Request-Encryption-To: X > >If user ID X is on the remailer's pubkey ring, the outgoing message is >encrypted to X. This could be usefull for anonymous return-address blocks. Encryption should be the default. Err on the side of caution. Eternal!Optimist(a)anon.penet.fi (copyright 1993, Eternal Optimist [Ha Ha Ha]) 0) 0) =:()]-< <na26436(a)anon.penet.fi> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3 iQCVAgUBLNgXzIjvfLxJbYYtAQEK4AP9HrSaMSOnlsxzEjgLbAgvsCSw3vMxLJ4u 856ZbKI2cZTNLoPzyWLNW68gZ7kcNeaF7MHKzWbI9tLEDePpWN34sB11wBlpfzcf WzcYVLI6JBLVERq2seyKU3cqAhWuxldSDeAlsKkMsrzI0tGgOaLkxCxhxn9weZf8 58mZeANd3sg= =8F9u -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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A Geodesic Society?
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, 20 Feb 1998 08:36:21 -0500 To: e$(a)vmeng.com From: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: A Geodesic Society? Sender: <e$(a)vmeng.com> Precedence: Bulk The following is something I wrote for a private online conference sponsored by Nikkei, the Japanese financial news organization. Since they're supposedly combing the list for quotable bon mots, I may end up in the Japanese papers. :-). Anyway, longtime residents of this list have seen me say this kind of stuff before, but for those who haven't, the following explains the kinds of effects I think the combination of ubiquitous public networks and financial cryptography can have. Cheers, Bob Hettinga --- begin forwarded text X-Sender: rah(a)pop.sneaker.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 00:24:07 -0500 To: gis-ec(a)nikkei.co.jp, gis-net(a)nikkei.co.jp From: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [gis-asia 10] A Geodesic Society? Cc: gis-asia(a)nikkei.co.jp Reply-To: gis-asia(a)nikkei.co.jp X-MLserver: majordomo-1.94.1 k-patch-2.0-alpha p-patch-1.0 X-sequence: gis-asia 10 Sender: owner-gis-asia(a)tokyo.nikkei.co.jp Precedence: bulk -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- As the token cryptoanarchist around here, I've been lurking way too long, mostly because I'm working on this financial cryptography conference we're doing in Anguilla next week. However, A lot of good stuff has gone by on all of these groups, and I think it's time I put my oar in and earned my keep a bit before I enter the maelstrom of next week's FC98 conference, and loose my chance to say anything here until it's all over. The first topic I'd like to talk about is something which is more general than my ostensible commercial focus in these discussions, and, after I've said my piece here, I'll go back to the commerce list and pay more attention to that end of things. I have a little more to say there on what you can do with the technology of money on public networks, though I'll drop a few hints here to get people thinking about them. My observation about networks in general is a rather obvious one when you think about it: our social structures map to our communication structures. As intuitive as it is to understand, this observation provides great insight into where the technology of computer assisted communication will take us in the years ahead. Because of Moore's Law and its effect of collapsing the price of semiconductors by half every 18 months, our telecommunication architectures have changed from hierarchical networks, where it's cheaper to add lines than it is to add expensive switching nodes, to geodesic networks, where it is ever-exponentially cheaper to add microprocessor switches instead of now relatively more expensive transmission lines. This isn't new. In fact, it's outlined in Peter Huber's landmark "The Geodesic Network", written in 1986 as a report for Judge Harold Greene as part of the Modified Final Judgement which broke up American Telephone and Telegraph, and with it the US telephone monopoly. I believe the original version is still available from the US Government Printing Office, and I know that you can order a revised edition from Peter Huber's law firm in Washington. Huber himself is now a famous technology analyst from the Manhattan Institute and a Forbes columnist, among other things. In "The Geodesic Network", Huber observed that because the network was becoming more and more geodesic, competition in telecommunications was becoming much easier. That's because switching, a scarce thing which had theretofore caused economies of scale and resultant "natural" monopoly, was becoming cheaper and cheaper to build, and thus causing *dis*economies of scale in the telephone markets. One can almost hear Huber doing a little heavy lifting from the Marines in report's conclusion, which was, essentially, "Deregulate 'em all, and let God sort 'em out." It's nice to see that we're finally getting to see deregulation of the "last mile" of the US telephone network 10 years after Huber's recommendation. As it is, it took *me* almost 10 years to realize something else about geodesic networks. It's something which required me getting back on the internet 4 years ago, after not being there since grad school, and discovering that financial cryptography -- that is, the cryptographic protocols for internet payment -- was much more important than the project management software I had wanted to sell on the net at the time. My realization was, if Moore's Law creates geodesic communications networks, and our social structures -- our institutions, our businesses, our governments -- all map to the way we communicate in large groups, then we are in the process of creating a geodesic society. A society in which communication between any two residents of that society, people, economic entities, pieces of software, whatever, is geodesic: literally, the straightest line across a sphere, rather than hierarchical, through a chain of command, for instance. This seems like a very simple truth these days. A "motherhood", as people in American business like to say. But, once you start thinking about the world in the terms of geodesic networks versus hierarchical ones, the world changes. A Buckminster Fuller version of satori, if you will, though I'm sure Bucky didn't think of human society in geodesic terms, at least from what I've read of his work. His "World Game", for instance, is primarily about the hierarchical centralization and redistribution of resources in an industrial fashion. But, as it was, Bucky Fuller had discovered a geometric archtype which was deeper than even his capacious understanding of its implications had gotten him before. So in light of this observation, for fun, let's look at human history in a few paragraphs. :-). Humans first lived in small groups on the African savanna. An artifact of this life is the fact that most people can't have serious emotional relationships with more than about 12 people, depending on how you define serious. :-). Think of it as the carrying capacity of the human "switch", and things get interesting. These small groups communicated geodesically. When you wanted to talk to someone, you went up and talked to them. Then we developed agriculture and its resulting food surpluses, people tended to congregate at the crossroads of trade routes, and that's where the first cities began. Civilization means, literally, "life in cities", remember? Once we had large groups of people in a single place, we had lots of information to pass around, but we also had expensive humans "switching" that information who were only able to trust about 12 people at any time. So, we had to develop hierarchical "networks", social organizations in other words, to move that information around. Notice we finesse the whole trust problem by using the entire hierarchy as one entity in everyone's trusted-person list. That's why people die for king and country, for instance, instead of just their family hunter-gatherer clan. So, we can now see the ancient city-state as a hierarchy of power, economics, whatever. We can also see ancient empires as a hierarchies of city states, and so on. Notice that the size of any given hierarchy in geographic terms is determined by the *speed* of communications it posesses. Athenian triremes were very secure ways to move goods and information in a relatively lawless Agean. Roman roads and galleys didn't just haul goods quickly, they moved information as well. Staged Mongol riders could carry messages across their own short-lived empire from a capital near China to the gates of Warsaw in as little as 14 days. Napoleon invented his 10-mile-an-hour stagecoach and highway system for exactly the same reason, and could almost legitimately call himself an emperor for the feat alone. That brings us to the modern nation state, which, I claim, is entirely the result of industrial communications technology. That is, you have increasingly faster communications, from sailing ships to trains to telegraphy and finally telephony, but you still have humans switching information. That gives you larger and larger communication, and thus social, hierarchies. Up until the automation of telephone switching -- paradoxically brought about a demand for universal service in exchange for that ultimate industrial hierarchy, the US telephone monopoly -- things just kept getting bigger and bigger. One could even see the increasing size of government in this century as an "antihierarchy" funded by the forcible confiscation or political extortion of economic rents from the large industrial hierarchies where industrial society's money was being made in the first place. For a tasty little digression, Marxism then can be seen as simple anti-industrialism, and an intriguing validation of Bertrand Russell's comments about the similarity of Marxism and the feudal aristocracy it hated so much. Hegel can't come to Marx's rescue here at all, because, for all it's anarchistic pretensions, Marxism can now be seen as merely industrialism's hierarchical antithesis, and not something "beyond capitalism". Besides, trading has been around since the savana itself. It's hard to imagine something antithetical to trade -- and have the result be human, anyway. :-). Okay. Now let's look at the future, shall we? Oddly enough, the "future" starts with the grant of telephone monopoly to AT&T in the 1920's in exchange for universal telephone service. When AT&T figured out that a majority of people would have to be telephone operators for that to happen, it started to automate switching, from electricomechanical, to electronic (the transistor was invented at Ball Labs, remember), to, finally, semiconducting microprocessors. Which, Huber noted, brought us Moore's Law, and, finally, that mother of all geodesic networks, the internet. So, seen this way, using the hierarchy-to-geodesy synthesis (speaking of Hegel :-)), a lot of things jump out right at us. Let's look at financial operations, for example. One can see, for instance, that the thing we call disintermediation in the capital markets is in fact a process leading to something I call *micro*intermediation, where large human decision hierarchies, like the New York Stock Exchange, or money center banks, are being outcompeted by large integrated proprietary computer networks, like the NASDAQ interbrokerage network, or Fidelity Investments here in Boston. Yet, these financial versions of big dumb bulletin boards, which still need humans to operate them on behalf of the customer, will themselves be replaced someday by smaller, more specialized and automated entities operating in increasingly smaller market niches, and, we aren't just talking about financial "shovelware", with database-driven web forms, either. Someday, for instance, a couple of portfolio managers from Fidelity could strike out on their own peculiar investment specialty, and set up a web server to handle their investor relations, but in a way that financial operations people thought was obsolete decades ago. Using financial cryptgraphy like David Chaum's blind signature protocol, our portfolio managers could just issue digital *bearer* certificates, right over the net to their customers, representing shares in the portfolio they manage, rather than keep track of all a given client's transactions in a database for posterity. Even more fun, using the digital bearer *cash* they get from the sale of those certificates, they could turn right around and instantly buy debt, equity, or any derivative thereof, in digital bearer form, of course, without waiting for any transactions to settle through a clearinghouse of any kind. Why? Because knowing that you've digitally signed a unique blop of bits and honoring the promises those various outstanding blops represent is a whole lot easier, faster, and, of course, cheaper than keeping track of every transaction you make for seven years, or whatever your friendly nation state says you have to do so they can send somebody to jail if that person lies to you. And, of course, digital bearer settlement is *much* faster than waiting for all those book-entries to percolate through various clearinghouses, banks, brokerages, and other financial intermediaries in order for a trade to clear and settle. Financial cryptography is a direct consequence of Moore's Law. You can't do it without computers, and, more important, lots of cheap computers on a network. But, you can do a lot of very neat things with it, as we've seen above. In fact, the protocols of financial cryptography will be the glue which holds a geodesic economy, if you will, together. And, of course, as Deke Slayton put it, "No bucks, no Buck Rogers." No geodesic economy, no geodesic society. I joke about VISA being replaced someday by an innumerable swarm of very small underwriting 'bots' whose job it is to form an ad hoc syndicate which buys the personal digital bearer bond issue you floated for today's lunch. In a geodesic market, the one-to-many relationships of hierarchical book-entry-settled industrial finance, like checks and credit cards, becomes to the many-to-one relationship of the geodesic digital-bearer-settled cash and the personal bond syndicate. But, what, you ask, do I do when someone defrauds me? The neat thing about using financial cryptography on public networks is that you can use the much cheaper early-industrial trust models that went away because you couldn't shove a paper bearer bond down a telegraph wire. In short, reputation becomes everything. Like J. Pierpont Morgan said 90 years ago, "...Character. I wouldn't buy anything from a man with no character if he offered me all the bonds in Christendom." In a geodesic market, if someone commits fraud, everyone knows it. Instantly. And, something much worse than incarceration happens to that person. That person's reputation "capital" disappears. They cease to exist financially. Financial cryptographers jokingly call it reputation capital punishment. :-). The miscreant has to start all over with a new digital signature, and have to pay through the nose until that signature's reputation's established. A very long and expensive process, as anyone who's gone bankrupt will testify to. So, you don't need biometric identity to stop non-repudiation. Translated, that means that since you're moving secure digital bearer certificates over an insecure private network like the internet, and not moving insecure debits and credits over a secure private network like the SWIFT system, you don't need audit trails to send someone to jail if they make the wrong book entry. Instead, you trust the issuer of a given piece of digital bearer cash, say, and not the person who gave it to you, just like you trust the issuer of a given currency today. Biometric identity is orthogonal to reputation in, um, "cypherspace". And, of course, a financial intermediary like the above issuer of digital bearer cash is not about to destroy its reputation for the sake of a very small transaction like the one you're doing, any more than the Fed would demand 6 one dollar bills in exchange for one five dollar bill just to make an extra buck. Well, not since they started listening to Friedman, anyway. :-) Microintermediation means what it says. Financial intermediaries never go away. You can't have markets, much less efficient ones, without financial intermediaries buying things low and selling them high. Renting their reputations to ensure transaction liquidity, in other words. This is at the essense of Von Mises' "Calculation Argument" against planned economies, and the defunct economy of the ex-Soviet Union is mute testament to that particular economic truth. Moore's Law, I like to say, operates like a surfactant of information, breaking great globs of concentrated information fractally into smaller and smaller bits, like so much grease in soapy dishwater. Capital, for the most part, can now be converted into information and instantantly bought or sold, or, more to the point, instantly settled and cleared in digital bearer form, in increasingly smaller and smaller bits, by smaller and smaller and increasingly more automated financial intermediaries. Microintermediated, in other words. What we get is a world where anything which can be digitized and sent down a wire will be auctioned off in real-time in cash-settled markets. Stuff like capital we've seen, but lots of other things, which are not immediately intuitive. Machine instructions -- teleoperated or not. Software of all kinds including entertainment and art. Bandwidth; I talk about a router saving enough micromoney out of switching income to buy a copy of itself. Maybe even adjudication and physical force, someday. After all, who says we have to buy violence from the local force monopolies we now call nation states, especially if we can get it cheaper and better -- and possibly in smaller amounts -- in a competitive auction market? Curioser and curioser, as Alice used to say... I mean, the nation-state's just another hierarchical artifact of industrial communication technology, right? Besides, If everyone's paying for things in cash and no book entry taxes can be collected because there aren't any book entries, then, as someone said on a Harvard Law School list a few years ago, "What happens when taxes become a tip"? Of course, there are various cypherpunks out there who say things like "Write softare, not laws.", which should make those folks on Mass Ave in Cambridge more than a little nervous themselves. So, welcome to the geodesic future. Not hoping to attract the wrath of the famous curse, isn't it an, um, interesting place? Cheers, Bob Hettinga -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.5.3 iQEVAwUBNOvB0cUCGwxmWcHhAQHVUAgAgYFUDcKLcsTNnevVmPaTp7lXxLo59oMI qChTR7TmeEi0W6SgSn4nUd5zlJiBkx1ut6n2tIasvfpXgd3OaLqkPo9ZNSrMQZE7 8C1d5dI42/VgN36fDPgB/zVxNrqxDNIFYdOf9aH1A7u4TYUJTe9PSSQdfKxzMyTf FQ+IfAzJjC3PFfxh566ghtHea7n235djGvAd8oHpr0SKBaSfu7jQjGUeecMDcTlg ZzQf7V51MFcgKd/UPi2dybzYZoK8bIb7aJ9cazGc5k1chUOeVOykpW4EIvXZrBs7 Z0oRQfxwU/u+oLpA8Vt7xdK0qCTRLdxnsTzEFLUjTH/70ep3YNcgRA== =9Xak -----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/ Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/> --- 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/ Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Where people, networks and money come together: Consult Hyperion http://www.hyperion.co.uk/ info(a)hyperion.co.uk ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Full-Strength Cryptographic Solutions for Worldwide Electronic Commerce http://www.c2.net/ stronghold(a)c2.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Like e$? Help pay for it! For e$/e$pam sponsorship or donations, <mailto:rah@shipwright.com> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 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/ Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/>

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Please send me some info
by Chiu Ngan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I am a student of the University of New South Wales in Australia, as I am going to do a research about my informayion system assignment, I am mailing to request for some information. My assignment is regarding to the current examples of "use of computers to commit fraud; use of computer to commit sabotage; false advertising/ claims for computer products; degradation of work as a result of computerisation; failures in computerising the workplace" ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

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