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Terrorism Hysteria on the Net
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Today's USA has a pair of front page stories: "Feds ready anti-terror cyberteam" and "Terrorism on the Net -- Post-Cold War hysteria or a national threat?" They lay out the nightmares and the valiant TLA-daydreams to out-fund the hackers and out-flummox the public. "You bring me a select group of hackers and within 90 days I'll bring this country to its knees, " says Jim Settle, retired director of the FBI's computer crime squad. "The threat is there, it's very real," says CIA General Counsel Jeffrey Smith. "If we have a Unabomber who decides to launch an attack with a PC instead of a bomb, (there could be) real damage."

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USA on Feds Cyberteam
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

USA Today, June 5, 1996, p. 1. Feds ready anti-terror cyberteam By M.J. Zuckerman The Clinton administration, citing the threat of electronic terrorist attacks, is taking steps to secure cyberspace. The administration is expected to announce later this month formation of: + An emergency response task force, directed by the FBI and based in the Justice Department, to manage any terrorist incident involving an attack in cyberspace. The Cyber Security Assurance Group would funcaon as both an emergency response team and investigative body. It will respond to any collapse of the National Information Infrastructure -- the nation's vital computer systems such as banking, transportation and telecommunications. "The threat is there, it's very real," says CIA General Counsel Jeffrey Smith. "If we have a Unabomber who decides to launch an attack with a PC instead of a bomb, (there could be) a great deal of damage." + A commission, dominated by national security representatives and chaired by a private sector person, to deliver within 12 months a national policy on cyberspace security. The commission faces difficulty in balancing government inter-agency turf battles as well as dealing with industry and the private sector, which oppose Internet regulation. "This is one of the toughest issues government faces today," says Smith. The initiatives have emerged from an unprecedented, closely guarded series of meeangs held in recent months between leading administration officials from law enforcement, national security and defense. Attorney General Janet Reno, acting under a classified presidential directive issued late last year in response to the Oklahoma City bombing, chairs the panel. It includes the directors of the CIA and FBI along with Cabinet secretaries from Treasury, Commerce, Transportation and Energy. Today, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations holds the second in a series of hearings examining cyberspace security and threats to information systems. The panel's minority staff is expected to endorse administration proposals to clearly draw national policy on information security but calls for a more ambitious emergency response effort by government. [End] ---------- To see adjoining UT article (9 kb), "Post-Cold War hysteria or a national threat?" http://pwp.usa.pipeline.com/~jya/hysteria.txt

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Re: [NOISE] Re: whitehouse web incident, viva la web revolution
by hallam＠Etna.ai.mit.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>>it is an insult to the 10 million civilians >>murdered by Hitler to use the term facist simply as a term of abuse, >You insult everyone's intelligence by equating fascism to genocide. >Suggested reading on the origins, meanings and definition of fascism include >Friere, Foucault and even the damn Utne Reader among many others. Meeks was intending to link Clinton's crypto policy to Hitler's. I see no evidence from Meeks' style that he has read Foucault. If Meeks wanted to be effective he could have accused Clinton and Freeh of seeking to build a Stalininst secret police, or make such an organisation possible. It would probably be more accurate to link Freeh to Hoover and point out how such power has been abused in the US political system before. The point was that Meeks' article is not the type to advance our cause. It basically says "if you are a democrat you believe in cypto-control". Err yes, well done, you have just told half the country that they support the opposite policy to the one we are trying to get them to believe in. Plus Bush and Reagan advocated the same policy so he is also saying Republicans are against our cause. If you want you could reduce the ranks of those fighting for crypto regulations to be removed to members of the Libertarian party, but it would be more effective to widen the base. Phill

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<<Vitamin B>> (June 6, 1996) Reality Check
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Speak of the devil... Cheers, Bob Hettinga --- begin forwarded text To: DAILY DOSE <DAILY_DOSE(a)notes.worldcom.com> From: VitaminB <VitaminB(a)bionomics.org> Date: 6 Jun 96 20:31:04 Subject: <<Vitamin B>> (June 6, 1996) Reality Check Mime-Version: 1.0 Vitamin B: Your Daily Dose of Bionomics June 6, 1996 Reality Check Everyone knows that you can't predict the future. The question is: Can traditional economics understand the present? Not too many years ago, on the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the leading economics textbook had this to say: "The Soviet economy is proof that, contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, a socialist command economy can function and even thrive." -- Paul A. Samuelson, Professor emeritus, MIT (in Samuelson & Nordhaus, Economics, 1989) We wonder what "conventional wisdom" of 1996 will prove to be as, ummm, quotable in the not too distant future. --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "If they could 'just pass a few more laws', we would all be criminals." --Vinnie Moscaritolo The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/

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Tell it like it is, Perry
by attila 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Addressed to: Cypherpunks <cypherpunks(a)toad.com> Perry Metzger <perry(a)piermont.com> now, why would anyone want to send Perry a PerryGram? --Perry's prose is far too elegant to warrant criticism, particularly the closing remark! = Your attitude seems to be "you can't prove anything so you must assume = that they are innocent." My attitude is "I can't prove anything so = they can't go to jail, but that doesn't mean I have to believe that = they are innocent -- in fact, I'm an idiot if I believe that." = = > I think that given Perry's ad-hominem attacks and the fact that this = > has nothing to do with cryptography that its about time someone sent = > Perry a Perry-gram. = = Cypherpunks no longer is a cryptography mailing list. Its a sewer. = = Perry = -- When you can't say 'fuck,' you can't say 'FUCK THE CDA!' --Lenny Bruce rephrased

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NSA/CIA to snoop INSIDE the U.S.???
by Ernest Hua 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

What?! What the *@#!! is wrong with the people who supposedly smart people representing us?! Ern -------- From SJ Mercury: NET FEVER ON THE HILL Published: June 6, 1996 BY RORY J. O'CONNOR Mercury News Washington Bureau WASHINGTON -- The White House wants a coordinated task force to fight terrorism on the Internet. Some senators think the CIA should be allowed to work hand in hand with the FBI to fight computer crime on U.S. soil. Meanwhile, the federal courts are deciding a major First Amendment case that might ban certain information from the Net. The nation's capital is in the throes of Internet fever. For the past several months, the condition has become acute, and by the end of the year the Internet itself may look far different as a result: more tightly regulated, more carefully monitored and more expensive. The latest symptom: a suggestion Wednesday for the elimination of laws that prohibit U.S. intelligence agencies -- notably the National >>> Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency -- from snooping <<< >>> on home soil. The reason: The potential for computer crime and <<< terrorism is so great, and the Internet so decentralized and international, that police and the FBI must combine forces with spy agencies in order to successfully analyze the threat and investigate criminal activity. ''If we're going to live in this kind of world, we're going to have to link the intelligence world with law enforcement,'' said Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga. For many people in government who work on computer and law-enforcement issues, the course of the disease seems painfully slow. They often describe the Internet as the Wild West that's sorely in need of a good marshal. But for many people who use the Internet, the government's efforts are moving far ahead of any real knowledge of a technology that, two years ago, almost nobody had heard of. ''There are not dead bodies in the street,'' said Donna L. Hoffman, a professor at Vanderbilt University who studies the Internet. ''It just doesn't make sense to rush into legislation.'' [ SNIP ]

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Re: [Off-Topic] "Curfews"
by Jean-Francois Avon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 6 Jun 96 at 11:19, jim bell wrote: > >>I _do_ believe, however, that the number of people unjustifiably > >>targeted will be rather low. <snip> Retaliation is possible, in > >> that case. Sorry Jim, I did not get that at all in the past. I assumed a context where the inner workings of AP would not be well understood by the population while here, you seems to indicate that everybody would operate under the threat / deterrance of mutual anihilation principle. A argued that an impulsive guy might target somebody unjustifiably while I overlooked that he could think twice before doing so. But by his nature, being a violent or thug at heart, he will understand this "peace based on threat" maybe even better than a pacifist at heart. So, my arguments might not stand. Have any constructive comments? (hey, just play devil's advocate from time to time :) Ciao JFA DePompadour, Societe d'Importation Ltee; Limoges porcelain, silverware and crystal JFA Technologies, R&D consultants: physicists, technologists and engineers. PGP keys at: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon ID# C58ADD0D : 529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891

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Re: FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:55 PM 6/5/96 -0700, Bruce Baugh wrote: >The rest of us (in the US) live in a country where the government can now >pretty much declare anyone they like terrorists, and suspend habeus corpus >on the flimsiest of grounds, and use evidence against foreigners that >doesn't have to be presented to the accused, and all sorts of fun stuff. But if that's true... >I don't think that my direst claims _will_ come true. But I don't think I'm >speculating anything that _can't_ happen, and I see much of it as >increasingly likely in the light of the ongoing furor over crypto and >related matters. If that's true (and I don't doubt that it is) doesn't that suggest to you that something serious needs to be done to fix the problem? >From a tagline: "If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you've always got." If you say we shouldn't rock the boat because the bad guys might come, isn't it just possible that the REASON the "bad guys might come" is because we have not, in the past, adequately rocked the boat? My impression is that it is frequently the pacifist-types who get us into war, because they start the process out by tolerating actions by others that turn into more serious actions, etc. You know, the appeasers. Are you an appeaser? All I'm advocating is to set up a system which gives government-types a very stark choice: War or peace. Then let them make that choice. I predict they will choose peace. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Clipper III analysis
by Chris Adams 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 29 May 1996 14:53:30 pdt, tcmay(a)got.net wrote: >> A good Questioned Document Examiner will be able to demonstrate >> that the signed document in question was not authored by Joe >> Blow, even if it contains his digital signature. > >I was of course talking about digital signatures, not handwritten signatures. > >I would be very interested to hear how a "Questioned Document Examiner" can >possibly determine that a digital signature was not applied by a particular >person. I believe he was referring to document analysis. By closely comparing a questionable work with those of known authorship, a skilled analyst can hopefully find enough [dis]similarities to say whether a document was authored by a given person. This Message Was Sent With An UNREGISTERED Version Of PMMail. Please Encourage Its Author To Register Their Copy Of PMMail. For More Information About PMMail And SouthSide Software's Other Products, Contact http://www.southsoft.com.

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Re: Micropayments: myth?
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:05 PM 6/6/96 -0400, Jeff Barber wrote: >Or are you saying that each IP packet will have an appropriately sized >digital cash payment attached? That seems like too much overhead. >And besides, that contradicts your idea that the user would explicitly >approve each wallet access. > >It gets even worse if you're an ISP, you obviously can't sit there >and approve each session that goes by (even if you could distinguish >higher level session boundaries which you won't be able to do). Are >you just to assume at the end of the day that everything worked >perfectly and you received enough revenue to cover your costs without >knowing anything about the payment/usage profiles of any of your >customers? And how is the ISP's network provider to know how much to >charge the ISP? I think I'm starting to sound like a broken record, so I'll stop with this post. Some of the issues you are discussing are addressed by the Digital Silk Road proposal from Norm Hardy and Dean Tribble. See: http://www.agorics.com/agorics/dsr.html Bill ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Frantz | The CDA means | Periwinkle -- Computer Consulting (408)356-8506 | lost jobs and | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | dead teenagers | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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