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[Portland] Cypherpunks party at Orycon 18
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Orycon 18 is a local Science Fiction convention held at the Red Lion hotel at Janzen Beach this weekend. I will be having a room party for Cypherpunks and related crypto-anarchist-types sometime during the convention. Anyone who wants more information, just drop me a line. I will be on a couple of Internet related panels, as well as a "PGP and Cryptography panel". Anyone interested in helping out with those, contact me as well. --- | "Remember: You can't have BSDM without BSD." - alan(a)ctrl-alt-del.com | |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmermann unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | |`finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ | alano(a)teleport.com |

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Re: Sliderules, Logs, and Prodigies
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> At 10:30 AM 11/1/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: > > >Sliderules were just becoming common when I was in high school.... When I was in high school, slide rules and log tables were standard equipment - calculators started to come in towards the end. There was a *lot* of controversy over their use in exams, and in homework ('show your working...'). At one point, you could use a calculator, but only if you noted the fact (and model) on your exam paper. I had a couple of nice 12-inch plastic slide rules - the better one, with about 20 scales and double sides was stolen while I was in college. I still treasure one of the heirlooms from my grandfather - a 12 inch bamboo rule, with his name carefully engraved in engineering lettering ( which he used during his 50+ years at Ma Bell). Not long ago I visited the MIT Museum, and in the shop found for sale 'new' (circa 1975) plastic slide rules, both straight and circular. I got one of each for old time's sake, and am thinking of having one framed with a 'break glass in case of emergency' sign. Peter Trei trei(a)process.com

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Thank you, John Gilmore, for protecting freedom of speech against Dr. Dmitri Vulius
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thank you, John, for being so brave and protecting our freedom of on-topic speech. You are a true cypherpunk. Thank you, Timothy C May, for advancing cryptography by posting 100% crypto-relevant messages about loans to other countries and your collection of assault weapons. John and Timothy just made the cypherpunks list better.

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Re: FW: Dr. Vulis is not on cypherpunks any more
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:08 PM 11/3/96 -0800, blanc <blancw(a)cnw.com> wrote: >Vulis did everything to set himself up for what he got, did he not. Indeed - my hunch is that this is the result that Vulis was determined to get, and would have done whatever was necessary to bring it about. Now he can cry that he is the "victim" of evil censorship, and he can wear the white hat of virtue - notwithstanding that he consciously sought to be censored, and has himself contributed mightily towards the (temporary) destruction of an otherwise useful list. Now he can leave the list with his "virtue" and his pride intact; something he could not have done had he simply unsubscribed himself. There are plenty of people who would have (and will) help him if he manages to come up with something on-topic to say. But, short-term, he's gotten what he was looking for (a chance to play victim) and we get a list with less crap on it. Perhaps we should have a moment of silence for Dmitri Vulis, sympathetic victim, target of dastardly censors, paragon of virtue and righteousness. I'll go ahead and have mine now. Given that John Gilmore is the source of the oft-repeated "The net sees censorship as damage and routes around it" quote, it strikes me as unlikely that he took the steps he did without some reflection on their meaning, consequences, and chances of success. -- Greg Broiles | "We pretend to be their friends, gbroiles(a)netbox.com | but they fuck with our heads." http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | |

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custom and privacy
by Zooko Journeyman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A million monkeys operating under the pseudonym "T.C. May" typed: > I of course remember _lots_ of things about people, I share those memories > on occasion (without requesting permission), I mention names, and I > certainly don't recall every giving one of the subjects of my memories a > cut of the action. > > In a free society, it is not possible or acceptable to control what others > remember or gossip about. Or even sell commercially. The infinitive "to control" here confuses force with contract, coercion with civil pressure, and law with custom. I believe Bill Frantz's original article made the distinction, and I believe it stated that his thoughts were in the context of the latter. Unfortunately cypherpunks sometimes seem unable to preserve such contexts in follow-up articles. In a free society, such as the one that I enjoy with my colleagues, friends, compatriots, acquaintances, enemies and perfect strangers on the Net, it is indeed possible and acceptable to exert individual and collective social pressure to influence the use and dissemination of information. I could, but won't, give many examples of people requesting that maintain certain privacy bits attached to information they gave me, and people graciously respecting the privacy bits that I transmitted along with my information. Sometimes these people were friends or acquaintances of mine, other times they were perfect strangers who acted out of professional self- interest, reputation-preservation, casual generosity, and/or-- as per Bill Frantz's article-- familiarity with and respect for custom. I applaud Bill Frantz's effort to direct the minds of cypherpunks towards a topic which is valuable and relevant, but which is not reducible to the convenient mental shortcut of "government BAD, not-government GOOD". Zooko, Journeyman

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Re: Zen Master
by George A. Gleason 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

IGNORE HIM IGNORE HIM IGNORE HIM please! People are dropping off the list because of this stuff. -gg

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Re: Pyrrhus Cracks RSA?
by cfrye＠ciis.mitre.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>You know the people who could break DES, RSA, PGP, etc. Shamir >unpacked Diffie's knapsack. What is most probable, is that these >ciphers will stand for some unforeseeable time until someone who >may not be born yet comes along and breaks them all as an idle >{exercise on her way to greatness in another field. > >But the NSA? No way, Jose. They might be nerds who hacked some >code at 3 am. But you put them on a salary and benefits in a >pyramid, then tell them not to talk about their work, and you >thwart whatever creativity they had. The NSA can kill you. But >t({they can never out-think you. Strong words that, IMHO, put way too much faith in the argument that a "restrictive" work environment inevitably crushes individualism and creativity. Any organization, .gov or !.gov, that: * recruits the best and the brightest and pays them well; * gives access to substantial computing/financial resources and academic knowledge; * fosters team-building, creativity, and competition *within the group*; * rewards achievement and provides status *within the group*; and * provides other movitivation, be it patriotism/pride/whatever, will produce more than its fair share of advances in a field. Given a concentrated environment and an advanced set of tools, it seems improbable that any group, regardless of organizational affiliation, could be outperformed *on an evolutionary basis* by a loose band of academicians and private researchers with irregular contact. Revolutionary change is impossible to predict, though I feel that no organization with sufficient resources would throw away promising methods without thorough investigation. Even so, I do personally believe that private individuals may have an edge in revolutionary research. Unfortunately, both statements are unverifiable. The key point to remember is that motivation is relative - regardless of our personal opinions, if someone seeks status within a group then more "restrictive" environments are not a hindrance to creativity. -- Best regards, Curtis D. Frye cfrye(a)ciis.mitre.org "If you think I speak for MITRE, I'll tell you how much they pay me and make you feel foolish."

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Re: The Final Ultimatum
by lefty＠apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Folks, Detweiler is psychotic. Answering this message of his, even to >flame him, isn't going to get anyone anywhere. There isn't any point >to it. Well, gosh, Perry, thanks for taking upon yourself to respond for the rest of us. A truly noble undertaking on your part. Many people are, in fact, capable of making decisions without your input, strange as this concept may appear to you. -- Lefty (lefty(a)apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:.

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3rd party beneficiaries and certificates
by liberty＠gate.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Dear cypherpunks: Professor Froomkin posted the following interesting questions to cyberia-L, and gave me permission to repost them here. Please direct any private replies to him <froomkin(a)law.miami.edu>. My apologies to those of you who hang out in both dens for having to see the same message twice. JMR [Forwarded message follows] I've been trying to work something out. (I've written these questions in the form of an exam because it's that time of year. In fact, I'm struggling with these in a paper I'm working on.) Carol runs a certificate authority (CA). She sells a certificate to Alice binding Alice's public key to her name and email address. In version (A) of the contract Carol posts the certificate on her web site. In version (B) of the contract Alice gets a floppy disk with the certificate. The certificate is in error (due to Alice's fraudulent or negligent misrepresentation to Carol). Bob relies on it to his detriment in a transaction with Alice. Assume Bob can show but for causation of his loss. Bob now wishes to sue Carol for negligent misrepresentation. He has, I think, three possible theories. 1) UCC. This turns on whether a certificate is a "good" or a "service". {Assume the answer is "service" for the rest of this hypo} 2) Contract. Bob has to show that he's an intended beneficiary under the restatement 2d test. This seems to be almost a theological question. Is the purpose of the certificate to give Alice a tool to induce Bob to transact, or to give Bob a benefit without which he will not transact? 3 )Tort of negligent misrepresentation. To make this especially exciting, let's assume all the action is in NY where the shadow of Cardozo still looms. NY retains a strong privity rule: You can only recover for a negligent misrepresentation if you are in privity of contract with the speaker. Question 1: If Bob is an intended beneficiary, is he in privity with Carol? (I think the answer is "yes"). Question 2: Are Bob's rights, or his status as an intended beneficiary, affected by whether the contract is form A or form B above? The classic cases, like Ultramares have the accountant's report spread around by the client. Suppose the accountant in Ultramares instead publishes the report on the Web -- what result? OK, now we change the facts. We're not in NY anymore, we are in a state that follows the restatement 2d rule in sec. 552. Question 3: Is Bob within the class of forseeable users entitled to recover for the tort of negligent misrepresentation as these terms are used in the restatement? Question 4: Is the certificate a good or a service? (I say it's a service, mostly, unless it makes no representations at all about its quality.) Extra credit: Look up http://www.verisign.com/netscape/legal.html and find the disclaimers in THE BIG TYPE. Do you know of any court that would enforce these? On a "good"? On a "service" provider? A. Michael Froomkin | +1 (305) 284-4285; +1 (305) 284-6506 (fax) Associate Professor of Law | U. Miami School of Law | froomkin(a)law.miami.edu P.O. Box 248087 | http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA | It's warm here. [End forwarded message] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMM+jfW1lp8bpvW01AQFe7QP/dlWbaICoo7lgtTZVsZvd4dvKx3LawfU9 FH8e78Tpo5ICgfKwBNNj6MlBgG7sxAu2LTqMHTTHkcuHksdNTZImJlnNs64phnK0 zBF7IqcT1BOBijWiFWdni+i62NGzppj0BKnyebmFivUbwmi4QGN3gLMxkvD94eWI TU7/+tFB/iI= =8JOv -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: e-mail forwarding, for-pay remailers
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>E. Allen Smith writes: >> There's one problem with this in regards to the "no necessary >> connection," and that 's the governmental requirement for mail >> forwarding. MBE and any legal other one will want to see at least >> two forms of ID including one photo, and have a form that they fill >> out using that and send to the local post office. Anyone have a >> way around this problem? There are two different sets of relevant rules in the US - Post Office and state. The PO's primary interest is making sure you don't mind if they don't forward your mail once you stop using the Commercial Mail Receiving Agent (CMRA) and secondarily that you aren't committing fraud by using the mailbox, sending people change-of-address notices, ripping off your creditors, and skipping town. California has a hopelessly dishonest law that just went into effect in 1995, which pretends to be designed to protect consumers from fraud by the 7 million small businesses in CA that uses mailboxes, and actually requires that _anybody_, business or not, who wants to rent a mailbox must fill out the Post Office form and also appoint the PO or CMRA as their agent for service of process and give them up-to-date True Addresses. The PO, meanwhile, "usually wants" a California Driver's License plus another ID to rent a box from them. (I didn't have such a thing when I last rented a box, and the PO hassled my mailbox company into asking for one when the new law came out.) After many attempts at calling the PO to get anybody who knows the _official_ rules for what ID is required, I found a PO lawyer who told me the rules are in the "Domestic Mail Manual", which any Postmaster has, so my next step is to look up one of those before I next get a mailbox. So maybe a random photo ID will work, such as your FooBar Consulting Employee ID, and maybe it won't, depending on what state you live in and how clueless your local Post Office bureaucrats are. At 05:29 PM 12/13/95 -0600, Andrew Loewenstern <andrew_loewenstern(a)il.us.swissbank.com> wrote: > I believe C2.org already offers non-dialup access accounts, paid for >with ECash, that do not require a valid snail-address or phone-number. >I am sure that there will be many more to come. I suspect Sameer would be happy to open an account paid in advance in small unmarked bills. AOL probably wouldn't. Fortunately, the government hasn't really caught on to the importance of email, so they aren't requiring that email providers know where you really live. I predict 1997 for that. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0663 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281

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