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"censorship in cyberspace"???
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I don't understand why people rant so much about censorship in cyberspace, given the ease of buying a new tentacle. a long time ago getting a new internet account was a big deal, but now they are as prolific as flies. you can now buy them for $7/mo from Community Connections, courtesy of another cypherpunk (Sameer Parekh) on this list. you even get a 5mb web site at this price, as I understand it. I'd be interested in hearing of any other "tentacle havens" out there if anyone has any comment. <g> my main point is that it's merely a semantic concept to say that someone is "censored" from a mailing list. it's not really possible to do such a thing anymore given how easy it is to get new internet account with no ID necessary. you can fight it or you can surf on it!! it's quite ironic that to have the ability for a moderator to have a "civilized" forum with a guaranteed ability to obstruct certain individuals, would require what cpunks would consider an orwellian identification system. (tying a human to their cyberspace posts. it could be done.) p.s. one of these days I wonder if someone is going to mount a really concerted attack against a mailing list using a full tentacle arsenal instead of only a single email address or anonymous remailers, just for the kicks of it. the "automatic prose generator" technology out there leaves a lot of other interesting ideas. an ingenious software engineer with a flair for writing could create some pretty sophisticated grammars that automatically generate text yet are impossible to detect over perhaps even dozens of messages output by them. they could even have their own personalities and writing styles, if the software engineer were creative and devious enough. it's just a matter of time, and really every mailing list in the world is defenseless against it. does anyone have a technical solution? you'd solve one of mankinds most pressing and difficult problems ever encountered: "spam". on the other hand, maybe such a thing has already happened and no one knows about it. or maybe its happening right now on this list. it would be absolutely impossible to detect in all the typical noise if the "graffiti artist" were crafty enough. (hee, hee)

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Vulis profile Vulis profile
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I had some free time this morning, and just for fun, thought I'd create a brief Net profile of our friend Dr. Vulis. Here's what I found (sources included): Dimitri Vulis #4k Burns St, Forest Hills,NY 11375-3506 (718)261-6839 Source: http://www.yahoo.com (Four11 people search) Birthday: December 29 Source: http://www.boutell.com/birthday.cgi/december/29 D&M Consulting Services (DM-DOM) 67-67 Burns Street Forest Hills, NY 11375 Domain Name: DM.COM Administrative Contact: Administration, PSINet Domain (PDA4) psinet-domain-admin(a)PSI.COM (703) 904-4100 Technical Contact, Zone Contact: Network Information and Support Center (PSI-NISC) hostinfo(a)psi.com (518) 283-8860 Record last updated on 31-Oct-96. Record created on 19-Jun-91. Domain servers in listed order: NS.PSI.NET 192.33.4.10 NS2.PSI.NET 38.8.50.2 Source: InterNIC Q: Who is Dimitri Vulis? A: Dimitri is an XSoviet immigrant who is enrolled (or used to be enrolled) in CUNY, and who is a computer professional involved i.a. in unicode matters. The realspace Dimitri is a polite person and a devoted family head. It's cyberspace image is not nearly as nice, unfortunately. He harasses people all over the net with the most offensive sorts of messages, and uses dirty tricks to retaliate to the people who do get offended. Among his accomplished feats is a series of articles about cat-eating dogs posted to rec.pets.cats (which caused a wave of complaints and made him lost his CUNY account) ; a series of porno binaries with obscene comments about his opponents posted to math-related newsgroups (he lost another academic account, at fordham.edu, after this scandal); and a series of racist articles denigrating all aspects of romanian life and culture which used to haunt the romanian newsgroup for years. Of course most of his net.bile is spilled over his fellow XSoviets, particularly of Jewish origin (such as Michael Verbitsky, Boris Veytsman, Vlad Rutenberg or myself, as well as all Brighton Beach together); and a lot of stuff comes out from his alleged aliases in bwalk.dm.com, aol.com and fly.harvard.edu. Some of these aliases match the names of his opponents, as I already mentioned. Sometimes not only the names but also addresses match (although paths don't). Dimitri Vulis also advertises the capabilities of his site for forging and cancelling articles. Sometimes he shrewdly comments articles of his own saying : "This article is most certainly forged, after all I spent a lot of time teaching you how to forge... but I nevertheless like this article's content". Source: http://www.math.harvard.edu/~verbit/scs/cranks/from-Shlomo.html (much more there too) AUTHOR PROFILE: dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com (Dr. Dimitri Vulis) 510 articles posted between 1995/06/29 and 1996/11/02. 71 % followups. Number of articles posted to individual newsgroups (slightly skewed by cross-postings): 132 misc.jobs.misc 67 news.admin.net-abuse.misc 67 news.groups 40 mail.cypherpunks 32 nyc.food 18 soc.culture.russian 13 news.admin.misc 12 nyc.general 10 news.admin.censorship 9 news.admin.policy 8 alt.censorship 7 alt.usenet.kooks 7 soc.culture.pakistan 6 alt.revenge 5 comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy 5 soc.culture.soviet 4 alt.sex.plushies 4 sci.math 4 sci.physics 4 talk.politics.medicine 3 alt.folklore.computers 3 alt.security 3 comp.lang.ada 3 comp.security.misc 3 sci.crypt 2 alt.nocem.misc 2 alt.sci.physics.plutonium 2 aus.flame 2 comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy 2 comp.unix.advocacy 2 microsoft.public.netiquette 2 soc.culture.israel 1 alt.2600 1 alt.anonymous 1 alt.bible 1 alt.computer.consultants 1 alt.consumers.experiences 1 alt.fan.bill-gates 1 alt.fan.my-big-hairy-penis 1 alt.privacy 1 alt.shenanigans 1 alt.society.neutopia 1 aus.general 1 comp.ai 1 comp.mail.uucp 1 comp.os.ms-windows.nt.misc 1 comp.os.ms-windows.win95.setup 1 comp.sys.mac.advocacy 1 humanities.language.sanskrit 1 misc.entrepreneurs 1 misc.invest 1 news.newusers.questions 1 nj.misc 1 nyc.seminars 1 rec.humor 1 rec.motorcycles 1 sci.psychology.psychotherapy 1 soc.motss 1 tor.general Source: http://www.dejanews.com profile Dimitri Vulis: Contrib. post: whose obnoxious, derivative and not-very-funny Soviet emigre jokes from Brighton Beach were a weekly feature about a year ago on rec.humor . He ignored completely any requests to stop. Eventually he started getting flamed in demotic Russian-quite fun for those of us who could read it. - Dan "And to think he felt it important enough to waste his two hours of daily connect time on it" Case -- so what _is_ the deal with vulis? is "russian emigre" a codeword for "jew", or for "russian emigre", or for something else? (if i recall correctly, minor and now somewhat reformed net.loon mikhail zeleny claimed rather convincingly that vulis's posts contained certain tell-tale phrases which are highly un-idiomatic in english ("dandruff-covered" was one of them, i think) which were dead giveaways of classic pathological russian anti-semitism.) so is vulis russian? an emigre? a jew in some sense? self-hating? maybe a self-hating russian jewish emigre who hates only the jewish half of themself? or maybe they hate the russian half too? are they now or have they ever been, while residing in america, on the payroll of any branch of any soviet or russian government? did they stop posting russian emigre jokes when the paychecks stopped coming? are they a zhirinovsky supporter now? the most recent messages posted by vulis that i have seen seem designed mainly to convince people that both zhirinovsky and valery fabrikant are (russian?) jews. (it's very likely true in fabrikant's case, at least.) maybe vulis is a self-hating supporter of zhirinovsky and fabrikant? -- Posts on soc.culture.soviet, and is apparently something of an institution there; likes to stir things up, and to flame and/or troll people. I'm not up on which sides are good and/or bad on s.c.s, which among other things seems to have been ravaged by Serdar Argic for a long time as well, driving away many of the gentler posters. Is currently engaged in flamewar with Peter V. Vorobieff there. Posts from dlv(a)CUNYVMS1.GC.CUNY.EDU (Dimitri Vulis, CUNY GC Math). Source: http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~tskirvin/home/legends/legends3.html Dimitri Vulis's barcode font ftp: ctan: tex-archive/fonts/barcodes/barcodes.mf There is a mailing list, rustex-l, for discussion of typesetting Cyrilic-based languages. To subscribe, send mail to listserv(a)ubvm.bitnet containing the text SUBSCRIBE RUSTEX-L <your name here> or mail Dimitri Vulis, DLV%CUNYVMS1.BITNET(a)cunyvm.cuny.edu [or dlv(a)dm.com?] Source: http://wsspinfo.cern.ch/faq/fonts-faq/metafont-list Bar code fonts ymir.claremont.edu by Dimitri Vulis [anonymous.tex.mf] BibTeX eedsp.gatech.edu for MS-DOS v99 by J. Demel and Dimitri Vulis Source: http://www.clinet.fi/pd/doc/texts/TeX-FAQ-supplement_(part_2_of_3 ) (this FAQ is dated 10 May 93) Server The files of type para used in the index were: /u3/wais/mirror/cissites/cissites.txt A list of contacts for most known organizations in the former Soviet Union who either have or plan to have e-mail connections. Provided by the SUEARN-L list, SUEARN-L(a)UBVM.BITNET. Keywords: USSR, CIS, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Baltic, Moscow, Leningrad, Siberia. The original document is stored on impaqt.drexel.edu:/pub/suearn/misc/cissites.txt and is available for anonymous FTP. >From the front matter: * The Authoritative Soviet E-Mail Directory and Guide ** For more information, subscribe to the SUEARN-L mailing list, or send e-mail to Michael Meystel or Dimitri Vulis (c) 1992 All rights reserved This file contains contact information (correct name / address / phone / fax #... possibly e-mail address) for sites of interest in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). We occasionally get asked questions like 'What is the Russian name of IAS?' or 'What is the postal address of St. Petersburg State U's math faculty?' or 'What does IPPI stand for?'. Over the years I've collected a fairly complete electronic address book of addresses of Soviet sites where mathematical research is done, which I gladly share. Sergej Gelfand and Don Parsons have kindly contributed their address lists (respectively, more math and oncology). An even more complete version of such file, listing sites of possible interest to people in other fields, and freely available on the Internet, would be very useful to many. Please send additions, corrections, suggestions, etc to: CISMAP(a)DM.COM I can't acknowledge everything, but I will try to read every e-mail. Dimitri Vulis ) Source: http://www.elvis.ru/wais/c.html

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CLA_sh0
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Vigorous Cypherpunk debate on its purpose and future may be a harbinger of global conflict. A book review today on global conflict and six related essays in November Foreign Affairs may provide illumination -- both for Cypherpunk's crypto-mission and for its intramural clashes. (See Lewis Koch's inquest of global CP disputes.) 11-6-96. NYP: "A Scholar's Prophecy: Global Cultural Conflict." Book review. With the end of the cold war, the division of the world into ideological camps and political networks has yielded to the basic human propensity to find meaning and identity in cultural commonality -- in blood, religion, heritage and birthright. After four centuries of Western domination, global politics will now become a complicated and deadly earnest contest among the world's major civilizations, mainly the Western one, the Islamic one, and the Sinic one deriving from China. Unless the West recognizes the power of cultural conflict, it could perish from ignorance, overconfidence and complacency. ----- http://jya.com/clash0.txt CLA_sh0 ---------- The Foreign Affairs essays: http://jya.com/clashidx.htm (The URL is the index of the six; Huntington's is ready; others follow.) Abstracts: The West: Unique, Not Universal, Samuel P. Huntington Many in the West believe the world is moving toward a single, global culture that is basically Western. This belief is arrogant, false, and dangerous. The spread of Western consumer goods is not the spread of Western culture. Drinking CocaCola makes a Russian no more Western than eating sushi makes an American Japanese. The essence of the West is the Magna Carta, not the Magna Mac. As countries modernize, they may westernize in superficial ways, but not in the most important measures of culture language, religion, values. In fact, as countries modernize they seek refuge from the modern world in their traditional, parochial cultures and religions. Around the globe, education and democracy are leading to "indigenization." And as the power of the West ebbs, "the rest" will become more and more assertive. For the West to survive as a vibrant and powerful civilization, it must abandon the pretense of universality and close ranks. Its future depends on its unity. The peoples of the West must hang together, or they will hang separately. Democracy and the National Interest, Strobe Talbott Democracy makes good neighbors, and in an increasingly interconnected world the United States has both the means and the motive to promote the democratic process abroad. On the home front, Americans crave a foreign policy grounded, like their nation, in idealpolitik as well as realpolitik. The administration has made support of nascent democracies a priority of its diplomacy from Latin America to East Asia, and the returns from South Africa, Haiti, Russia, even Bosnia seem positive. But democratization is a long, hard journey in which elections are only the first step. The United States should encourage new democratic governments through their most fragile phase. Defense in an Age of Hope, William J. Perry Twice before, America had the opportunity to make the prevention of conflict its first line of defense. It must not lose this moment after the Cold War to foment a revolution in security strategy. Preventing proliferation is key, and U.S. programs help turn Soviet missile sites into sunflower fields. The American armed services the world's most emulated, show other militaries how to function in a civil society and conduct exchanges that head off misunderstandings. In Europe, George Marshall's fondest hopes are being realized through the Partnership for Peace which reverberates well beyond the security realm. Meanwhile, the United States leverages forces for maximum deterrence and invests in smart technology. But its best investment is in openness and trust, the essential tools of the art of peace. Germany's New Right, Jacob Heilbrunn Not skinheads in jackboots but journalists, novelists, professors, and young businessmen constitute the German new right. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, they have sought the "normalization" of German history, a revival of nationalism, and recognition that Germany is the most powerful country in Europe. When confronted with the Nazi past, they talk about Stalin's crimes and complain of an oppressive "political correctness." Violence against immigrants is answered with complaints of attacks against Germans. Though not a political movement, the new right is extending the boundaries of the politically acceptable. Banning Ballistic Missiles, Alton Frye Heady years for arms control make a superpower complacent. The structure of restraint accepted by Washington and Moscow could crack; meanwhile, proliferation continues apace and nuclear materials trickle onto the world market. The Clinton team has followed through on the work of past negotiators, but it is high time for a third START. The United States should propose the dramatic steps of placing nuclear warheads in "strategic escrow" and banning ballistic missiles. Advanced monitoring and inspection technologies make the plan practicable, and there will be security payoffs for all. Is the World Ready for Free Trade?, Charles R. Carlisle Though a leap to global free trade is a nice idea, the political support is just not there. Nor is any such earthshaking step necessary. The World Trade Organization has an extensive built-in agenda that should not be derailed. Fears of regionalism are greatly exaggerated, since regional trade has not increased much since the early 1970S and current plans for free trade in the Americas and the Pacific are unlikely to succeed. Few countries share the free-trade faith of the United States and Great Britain, and even in those places, economic anxiety threatens to push trade in the other direction. -----

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UNSUBCRIBE
by paratama＠idola.net.id 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

UNSUBCRIBE

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Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It appears to be widely believed that cryptoanarchy is irreversible. Everybody believes that the race to deploy or forbid strong cryptography will define the outcome for a long time. I can't think of a reason why this should be so. If the wide use of strong cryptography results in widely unpopular activities such as sarin attacks and political assassinations, it would not be all that hard to forbid it, even after deployment. I am curious why many people believe this is not true. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Re: Blocking addresses by default
by Rich Graves 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Mark M. wrote: > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > > With remailer abuse becoming more popular and remailers going down > because of complaints, there seems to be some interest in remailer > software that will block all email by default and will only pass > along email that is explicitly unblocked. I think this threatens serious security problems for the remailer network in two ways: 1. You'd create a list of people interested in anonymous information, which could potentially be obtained by police or other armed thugs. 2. The traffic would go down so substantially that traffic analysis would be trivial. As a counterproposal, I'd like to see better disclaimers on remailed messages. The reason the people complaining are so pissed off is that the blocklists are neither advertised nor automated enough. I'd like to see disclaimers and block list instructions at the top of the body of every single message. This would be encapsulated in some mark characters so that it could easily be removed by remailer chains. E.g., To: remailer(a)erehwon.com Request-Remailing-To: remailer(a)nowhere.com [message] remailer(a)erehwon.com prepends the following to the message before it is sent along: $$ This message was sent through the anonymous remailer network. Neither the operator of this remailer, remailer-op(a)erewhon.com, nor the postmaster at this site has any way of determining the source or filtering the content of remailer messages. No logs are kept. If you do not wish to receive such anonymous messages from any link in the remailer network, send an email message to remailer-operators(a)c2.net with subject line "block." For more information on the remailer network, see [Raph's list] or send email to help@[?]. $$ remailer(a)nowhere.com looks for "$$" as the first line of the message, and strips everything up to the next occurrence of "$$". It then appends its own disclaimer block before sending the message to the hop (remailer or final destination). A bit annoying, yes, but I think this would go a long way towards improving public relations. I don't see how it compromises security. What's wrong with this scheme? Other than the fact that all remailers would have to change their software at the exact same moment. :-) [By the way, someone told me that the Chardos remailer doesn't include Complain-To or block-list instructions anywhere, not even in X-Headers. Is this true? I think that would be bad. [tm]] - -rich - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBMoJFnCoZzwIn1bdtAQEZSwF/eurxI6jVBcv4srS8FEE3Rtc5rVCTfyw8 gNrC5p5ZzBGgFCaM3MOair4gH91zH/HK =oqSh -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: FW: Dr. Vulis (ad nauseum)
by camcc＠abraxis.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:27 PM 11/6/96 -0600, you wrote: : [snip] :In short they have now opened themselves up for defamation and liable suites by imposing an editorial policy on the contents of this list (1). This is not a they; this is an individual with (and within) his own rights. Nonsense, no policy has been stated. The owner determined that the good Dr. had been disruptive and had become a detriment to the owner's list (and possibly sanity). : :This opens up the potential, for example, for Tim May to sue the operator of :the Cypherpunks mailing list now for posts from users (even anonymous ones) :which defame or otherwise liable his character, reputation, or ability to :pursue income in his chosen field. PLEASE, let's not drag poor Tim into this. Hasn't he suffered enough?! This does not follow even from the tortured logic above. :In short the operators of the list :becomes publishers and distributors of the material. It is the legal :difference between a bookstore and a book publisher. :Censorship is censorship, irrespective of the source of the limitation. :Free expression is impossible in an environment of censorship. The right to :speak not only implies a right to not speak, it also implies the right to :emit complete mumbo jumbo. The actual content of the speech is irrelevant. "Implies the right"?? Rights either exist or do not exist (endowed by their Creator); they are not be implied. The content of speech is certainly not irrelevant. Disruptive speech and behavior have never been protected. : :The Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and press. [snip] Only that they :would not have limitations on their actions imposed by the federal government. : : ARTICLE I. : : Congress shall make no law [snip] It says CONGRESS! We're not discussing an action by the federal govt. here. I may choose to ask those visiting my house to refrain from discussing mumbo jumbo; if the individuals persist, I can ask, nay demand, that they leave. : :And just to make shure it is clear, the right to put something on the paper :(ie speech) is distinctly different from being the one doing the actual :printing. What paper? What does this mean? : :I have argued in the past that this list is a defacto public list because of :the way it is advertised and to the extent it is advertised. All the protests :by the operator to the contrary will not convince a court. Advertised? It has been a matter of regret that I _stumbled_ into this unruly tangle of wits. Simply because one has argued that "the list is ... a defacto public list," don't make it so any more than my arguing that a newspaper available to the public can have no control over its own editorial policy. Let's get beyond this. Cordially, Alec PGP Fingerprint: pub 1024/41207EE5 1996/04/08 Alec McCrackin <camcc(a)abraxis.com> Key fingerprint = 09 13 E1 CB B3 0C 88 D9 D7 D4 10 F0 06 7D DF 31

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Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Jeremiah A Blatz wrote: >ph(a)netcom.com (Peter Hendrickson) writes: >> It appears to be widely believed that cryptoanarchy is irreversible. >> Everybody believes that the race to deploy or forbid strong cryptography >> will define the outcome for a long time. >> >> I can't think of a reason why this should be so. ><snip> > Well, once I've got my strong crypto and electronic commerce, and 20 > or so virtual identities to do things for me, and the gub'ment can't > tell what money I'm making and spending, so they can't tax me. So if > they can't tax me, and they can't tax lots of folks, then they can't > pay their jack-booted thugs. So the goverment becomes irrelevant. It > can't support a huge police state infrastructure, and certainly can't > but mega-crays to break my crypto, so how're they going to retain > control? > When we say anarchy, we mean anarchy. This only works if there are large numbers of people who think it is a good idea. Otherwise, the resources of the Federal Government may be directed quite effectively against a small number of people. If you can get a life prison term for your strong crypto you may hesitate to use it. If not, then you may get to be an example for everybody else. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:46 PM 11/7/1996, Mark M. wrote: >On Thu, 7 Nov 1996, Peter Hendrickson wrote: >> If mandatory GAK were imposed, reviewing messages is easy, even with >> inter-agency fighting. Or, encryption in general could just be >> forbidden if GAK created too much hassle. > > How would this be possible? The latest GAK proposal is for companies to store > keys instead of the government. There is the potential for colaboration > between a TLA and an "escrow" company. It is also possible for a TLA to > illegally obtain the keys from the company's database. However, it would > still be impossible to review every message. Even if the government had full > access to all encryption keys, it would still be technically infeasible to > review every message. The latest GAK proposal is not under discussion. What is under discussion is the policy options that are possible when there is strong public support to suppress strong cryptography. The Four Horsemen scenario would likely generate such mass support, even among cypherpunks. >> In practice I suspect that good stego is hard. You don't have to be >> right every time when you look for it, just some of the time. When >> you see packets that seem kind of funny to you, the judge issues you >> a warrant and you search the suspect's house and computer very carefully. >> If stego is in use, the software that generated it can be found. Then >> you hand out a life sentence. > Good stego is possible. Stegoing data in jpegs is very secure and probably > infeasible to detect. I am not convinced, but I am not expert in this area. > However, I find the life sentence idea pretty unrealistic. You are assuming > that there will be wide support for tough restrictions on crypto. This is > not currently the case and I doubt it would ever get to this point. Yes, I am assuming that the Four Horsemen scenario would stimulate strong public support for extraordinarily tough restrictions on crypto. Yes, I doubt it would ever get to this point because cryptoanarchy will be far less dramatic than many people believe. It may cause dramatic changes, but they will be subtle and gradual, like the Net's influence. For instance, I don't think Ruby Ridge would ever have been an issue raised in Congress if it hadn't been for the Internet. This is a subtle and positive change, but most people hardly noticed the effect of the Net. The way in which the agenda is set has moved out of New York and Washington. Strong cryptography promotes this because it enables people to discuss issues which are important to them without fear of retribution. > Not very many people are currently supporting any life sentence for anyone > who is in possession of explosives, despite the increase in terrorist > activity. Gun-control advocates aren't supporting laws that will give a life > sentence to anyone who owns a gun. Given that many people who believe in > gun-control and tagants in explosives are against GAK, why do you think there > will be such a revolt against strong crypto? I don't think that there will be a strong revolt against crypto. From the point of view of the GAKers that's a problem. That is why they have to act before the public discovers it's an asset, not a liability. But, if the GAKers are right about the Four Horsemen scenario (which I doubt they believe themselves) there would be great public support for drastic measures and these measures could be quite effective. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:03 PM 11/7/1996, Timothy C. May wrote: > However, if guns are not outlawed, are not hard to get, may be bought and > sold at flea markets and gun shows (which is where most of my guns have > come from, and which is where over the years I bought and sold about a > dozen or so various guns, none of them transferred with any paperwork, > identities asked for, etc.), and once gun ownership reaches some threshold, > later attempts to ban guns, seize them, halt ammunition sales, etc., > require draconian steps. (This is why so many gun owners have schemes to > bury spare guns in plastic pipes deep underground, place them in safe > deposit boxes, etc. And why so many of us reload our own ammo.) > Without taking a stand on the issues of whether guns should or should not > be restricted, the situation is quite similar to the ongoing deployment of > strong cryptography. Once widely deployed and "ingrained" in the habits of > many, later attempts to seize the newly-outlawed items are problematic. > Speech is similar to this. Once mechanisms for free speech are present in a > society, once people are used to having the "right" to speak freely, once > many channels of communication are widely available, and so on, it becomes > well nigh impossible to go back to a non-free-speech situation. > I believe, Peter, that your arguments naively ignore this sort of point. > Those in D.C. actually understand it well, and would laugh at your argument > of "If crypto turns out to be a problem, we can always ban it later." The key here is that in these cases the practice has become widely accepted. By widely accepted, I mean that very significant numbers of people believe that there is nothing all that wrong with the practice. Those who disagree do not feel it is worth the trouble to put a stop to it. If the Four Horseman of the Crypto-apocolypse were real, we could certainly put a stop to cryptoanarchy if we wanted to. Very few people would be willing to tolerate strong cryptography if it meant that it was real easy to have people killed, resulted in many sarin attacks, or widespread kidnappings. I doubt you could find many readers of even this list who would find such scenarios acceptable. You are right that the people in D.C. understand your point quite well. And I am naive for expecting them to honestly discuss their policies. The reason they fear cryptoanarchy is not because it will be something people won't like - quite the opposite. If they are to succeed they have to stop it now before it is widely recognized to not be a problem for people who earn their living. I believe that if the people in D.C. honestly believed that the Four Horsemen were coming, they would wait for the first real evidence of it to rally the society behind their cause and write themselves into the history books as heroes. Today, strong cryptography has caused no noticeable problems. People who want to forbid it can only justify such intrusive and politically risky policies on the grounds that something irreversible occurs after deployment. But, I don't believe I have yet seen any sort of explanation for irreversibility that is not based on "well, it won't be all that bad." > I don't imagine the parallel argument, for free speech, would go over well > in, say, China: "We'll let people say what they want, publish what they > want, set up newspapers, buy whatever foreign magazines they want, use > computers, and gather as they wish to make whatever plans they wish to. If > we don't like the results, we'll just go back to what we had before." This argument would certainly not go over well with the leaders of China. The people of China may have another point of view. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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