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U.S. Exit Tax - SI
by gjeffers＠socketis.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

U.S. EXIT TAXES from Strategic Investment's Intelligence bulletins - November 15, 1995 Strategic Investment 824 E. Baltimore St. Baltimre, MD 21202-4799 Published monthly for U.S. residents at US$109 per year. Republicans add barbed wire to Clinton's "Berlin Wall." SI accurately forecasted the coming of the "exit" tax proposed by the Clinton Admin- istration earlier this year. Now Senate Republicans have passed an exit tax that is even more punitive than that proposed by Clinton. Section 12441(b) of the Balanced Budget Reconciliation Act of 1995 (H.R. 2491) adds a new layer of confiscatory taxes, succession taxes, to be imposed upon U.S. citizens and residents. Unlike gift or estate taxes, which are imposed upon the giver or his estate, succession taxes are imposed upon the recipient of bequests. Under the Senate proposal, succession taxes would be levied upon property acquired by gift or inheritance from a former U.S. citizen or former long-term resident of the U.S. who leaves U.S. tax jurisdiction after February, 1995. This tax would make it finan- cially more punitive for an American to renounce his citizenship unless his entire family came along. It would also make unattractive for foreign- ers with close U.S. relatives to take up residence in the United States. The would be subject ot confiscatory exit taxes upon leaving. (Questions arise - is there any legislation that Congress can't pass or attempt to pass? Aren't Republicans supposted to be an alternative to Democrates?) - GLJ

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FKI_osk
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

11-14-95. Washrag: "FBI Targets Expected Growth In Computer Crime." The FBI is beefing up its fight against computer crime. A Washington office, which handles international cases, was established in 1993. The San Francisco office will keep a close eye on activities in Silicon Valley, while the New York squad will handle financial-related computer crimes. "Postal Service Planning to Sell Prepaid Telephone Cards." Because the phone cards are "stored value cards," they could offer the Postal Service a logical first step toward the use of a "smart card" that might be used in connection with an information kiosk the agency is developing for the federal government to provide the public with a computer link to the federal bureaucracy. Long-range plans for the kiosk call for use of smart cards that would enable people to receive government payments, such as welfare benefits or checks for food stamps. FKI_osk (7 kb)

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setting up an ecash shop
by sameer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

If you'd like to setup an ecash shop as a merchant, you can do it this week and have the $300 setup fee waived. (This is for the $5/month 2% movement fee account-- the most expensive one they have.) I setup my eshop(a)c2.org thing using the promotion. Information is at http://www.marktwain.com/promo.html (The $300 setup fee I think is outrageous, but at least this week you don't have to worry about it.) -- sameer Voice: 510-601-9777 Community ConneXion FAX: 510-601-9734 The Internet Privacy Provider Dialin: 510-658-6376 http://www.c2.org/ (or login as "guest") sameer(a)c2.org

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Re: encryption in BeOS kernel
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Either John Young or someone imitating his style wrote: >Would chip-fabbers covertly Fortezza chips to get export ok? > I have no idea what "Fortezza" means as a verb, but I'll Moscow a guess: Intel might, according to this guesser, insert NSA-approved back doors in "information appliance" chips. Unlikely in the extreme, for a variety of reasons. First, designers cannot keep secrets. Second, examination of the chips would reveal such meddling. Third, Intel is only one of several likely providers of such chips (e.g., Oracle is said to have plans to use Acorn ARM chips, and DEC may also provide low-end Alpha chips, and of course Motorola-IBM has variants of the PPC to provide). >Motorola, HP, IBM, others long-linked to USG are ever ready >to gobble international market share in the national >interest. > >Intel, sure, world-class fab plants planting chip-secrets. > >Wonder if that key escrow protest to Gore is a cover for >economic actions authorized by National Security D&D? Too much Pynchon? --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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CSE gets flak on TV
by s1113645＠tesla.cc.uottawa.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

For those who care, the Communications Security Establishment has been getting some flak for spying on Mex. during NAFTA talks and on Korea to help us sell Can. nuke reactors: (This rather mirrors the trouble their sister agency, the NSA, has been getting into) (sorry the online newscasts were rather vague) _________________________________________________________________ CP LOGO CANADIAN NEWS DIGEST Tuesday, Nov. 14 Electronic snooping part of the game OTTAWA (CP)--Intelligence experts say it's no big secret that Canada's high-tech spy agency snoops on friendly countries for financial gain. Increasingly, intelligence agencies around the world are using their antennas, computers and codebreakers to gather economic information, Wesley Wark, a University of Toronto history professor, said Monday. Some of Canada's largest trading partners--including the United States, France and Japan--comb the airwaves for useful information, so Canada would be foolish not to join the game, said Wark. Canada's secretive Communications Security Establishment--an arm of the Defence Department--collects and analyses communications traffic on the activities of foreign states, corporations and people. Jane Shorten, a former CSE employee, told CTV News in an interview Sunday the agency spied on Canada's allies and trading partners--including Mexico and South Korea--by eavesdropping on embassies, consulates and diplomats. ___ HEADLINE NEWS All times are Eastern Standard Time Date: Tue-14-Nov-1995, Time: 13:00 mexico and south korea are angry about reports that canada spied on them. the mexican government has filed a diplomatic note expressing its suprise and concern, and south korea has launched an inquiry. a former intelligence agent, jane shorten, says she spied on both countries, as well as japan, when she was with the communications security establishment. she says the c-s-e shifted its focus after the cold war from spying on the russians to spying on allies to get trade secrets. prime minister chretien says the organization is supposed to operate within the law. chretien says the c-s-e doesn't report to him on a daily basis, so he doesn't know if it was spying on anyone.

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Re: Hardware-random-bits interface
by David K. Merriman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:31 PM 11/14/95 -0800, you wrote: >I've been thinking about physically random bits recently, so >I'd like to offer a simple, easily implementable interface to a >source of such bits, along with a design sketch using a common >radio receiver chip as the noise source. It sounds like a fairly decent idea, _as long as you shield the bejeebers (technical term :-) out of it_. Otherwise, anybody with a signal generator could skew your numbers however they saw fit: any component lead can act as an antenna, no matter now small that lead is. One way to handle it would be to lay it out as a multi-layer PCB, with the signal & power traces inside, and ground plane on the outer layers. Then enclose the circuit components inside a shielding enclosure (mu-metal would be good) mounted to the PCB, then tuck the entire assembly inside another enclosure (small aluminum box for example, also connected to ground). Of course, there would be easier ways to fabricate it, but they would just make the shielding that much more difficult to implement. Dave Merriman This is a test (3 UUE lines) of the unconstitutional ITAR - 1/713th of the PGP executable. See below for getting YOUR chunk! ------------------ PGP.ZIP Part [015/713] ------------------- M=$<(&L`#*IPP",(G6(,,S,`P](<2RWU96XCW86/JBYV8A\D8@X'HB_9H#&\X MX'PCUB.,13B"X8`R?^J-:UB.M_`U\>[#)BS&5$0C,Y#^1CS>1`\T1QTXX6!3 M8H,),S$8G>&.WP(8IRA`-M['+`Q%&_C"">5-F%LX@<_Q$;*P'',Q$Z/AA[8M ------------------------------------------------------------- for next chunk to export --> http://dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/export/ <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> My web page: http://www.geopages.com/CapitolHill/1148

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e$: Come aaaannnndddd Get it!
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm in the process of scrambling to get the e$ web page set up for e-cash before the deadline for *no-fee* *commercial* accounts at Mark Twain Bank this Friday, and who should answer the mail but fellow cypherpunk Lucky Green. So, Lucky tells me that *he's* the guy who beat up Chaum/MTB and Co. to prime the pump for web-vendors by offering *free* signup for e-cash accounts. Muchos Kudos to Lucky for making that happen. Sameer's done it, I'm going to do it, and I'm hoping that everyone who *can* do it *will*. Lumpy though MTB may be, they're taking a risk that no one else in the financial community would, and they deserve whatever support we can give 'em. If they do it and it works, there will be others. Come on, people, let's make it work. Put your e$ where your mouth is, or at least on a hard drive somewhere... http://www.marktwain.com/ecash.html Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA (617) 958-3971 "Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell The e$ Home Page: http://www.webstuff.apple.com/~vinnie/Rah >>>>Phree Phil: Email: zldf(a)clark.net http://www.netresponse.com/zldf <<<<<

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Java & Netscape security (reply to misc. postings)
by mrm＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi Harry & Perry & Jeff & Dr Cohen & "Alice" - 1. Netscape security: Like Jeff said, Netscape 2.0beta has all the same security features as JDK beta. (JDK = Java Developer's Kit, the name for our current product.) Netscape and Sun have been cooperating closely to implement, and test, and document the applet security model. The applet security manager and the applet class loader are implemented at the Java layer, for which source code is available from Sun. Granted, some elements of the the applet security model are implemented at the Java<-->runtime level, and that's why we have tests that we run on the appletviewer and on Netscape Navigator. 2. Corporate security class: Harry asks: | My question is, can a corporate user replace the security class in | Netscape. I understand that all the class libs are in an external | file. While a virus might exploit this... my reason for asking is for | corporate developers who are building "intra"net systems.. making some | tweaks to the security class would give them the flexibility they need. | Otherwise we have taken much of the fun out of Java. (for good | reasons). The best thing to do if you want to implement your own intra-corporation security model in the short run is to get a copy of the beta source code, and take a look at AppletSecurity.java and AppletClassLoader.java. You can substitute your own versions of those for your inhouse use. This is relatively easy to do with the appletviewer, and although it's possible to do some binary hack on moz2_0.car and replace certain files with your own, it's probably not everyone's cup of tea. I mean, there's a difference between what you can do, and what you want to do ... I understand that! For the next release, we are working on how to enable people to accomplish what you want to accomplish, in a standard way and in a usable way, which preserves the applet security model. The goal is to design the APIs so that applets can have access to more system functionality in a secure way. Presumably what you really want to do is write applets that have access to file i/o (or what have you), not re-implement the security manager. 3. Postscript considered dangerous: (insert-smiley) As for the question of someone invoking a postscript interpreter via a browser and thus opening up their system to some rogue postscript file: I think it would be great if either of these two things were to magically happen: 1) people would stop putting postscript docs on web pages because it's the wrong technology for WWW - it wastes bandwidth - it's hard to view & hence often ugly - everyone just prints it out anyway and then complains because there is no one "standard" implementation of postscript printing worldwide and there are dozens of minor problems 2) someone could implement a secure postscript previewer (whatever that means!) I doubt either of those two things will happen. The average Jo on the internet needs to understand that when s/he downloads binary files over the internet and run them from insecure programs on their local computer, well, s/he runs some risk. This risk might be tiny, but it's impossible to quantify loss. If I lose a poem that I'm writing, to me that's priceless, so I do not intend to imply that loss of data isn't tragic for the person who loses it. If you have data you can't bear to lose, be sure to practice safe computing. Perform backups regularly, and use judgement about which interpreters and executable programs you allow to run on your PC. Marianne -- internet fan, mrm(a)netcom.com Java Products Group, mrm(a)eng.sun.com

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Re: Hardware-random-bits interface
by jimbell＠pacifier.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> > And if one is left with only internal noise, why not simply use a nice >> > clean source like a Zener diode? >> >> Quite solidly agreed. Internal noise beats external noise, and there >> is no point in using a radio receiver when what you want is internal >> noise. > >It may have been misleading to refer to a radio receiver chip: the >noise generated by the chip will be entirely internal. It doesn't >depend on any external signal "sneaking in"; the noise comes from >the effective resistance of the first amplifier stage. Nothing >is being "received", in some sense; it's just a big hunk 'o gain. > >A Zener diode would be fine, but the design is a bit more complex, >especially for wide bandwidths---you need to mess with biasing >voltages, speedy op-amps, interface to CMOS, and all that jazz. >You'd need external power (or a DC-DC converter). I wanted a >super-simple design that people could just plonk down on a PC >board. Two chips and some bypass capacitors. Why not do both? A Zener is supposed to be a relatively high-level source of white noise, up to some upper bandwidth, so you could just feed the Zener voltage (through a blocking cap, if necessary) to the radio receiver input. See, you and the chip manufacturer are working at crossed purposes: a radio receiver chip is SUPPOSED to be a low-noise device. For your purposes, you WANT it to be a high-noise device, to minimize the significance of external noise. Since the radio receiver chip does some things you want (gain, maybe AGC), but doesn't necessarily add an adequate amount of noise, a zener would be an excellent addition.

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Re: e$: Mandarins, Lifers, and Talents
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>It really did not happen because of cheerleaders. This is a recurring >belief of mine, notably in my occasional interactions with the nanotech >community, as a few members of this list can attest to. The "Rah, Rah"s--no >pun intended--play a minor role in adoption of new products and >technologies. Tim, you can't tell me that there weren't people who were just plain fired up about the prospects for any really serious technology. Where are you living, the Gernsbeck Continuum? Tim, those "cheerleaders" are the ones who either get fired up to do something themselves, or if they can't, they get people either fired up to buy stuff, or fired up to build stuff. Howard Hughes was one. Hell, the Wright brothers were. So are you, Tim, only your passion is strong crypto and cryptoanarchy. Mine is this geodesic market stuff... >One argument I am never persuaded by is the hackerish "Feh." (Does anybody >but hackers use this strange word?) Ah. Well, Tim, "Feh" is yiddish, actually. Just like "hacker" comes from electric trains. If you don't believe me on *that* one, ask Mr. Levy, who knows all about the MIT Model Railroading Club... >In any case, I'm not interested in "doing better than that." My support for >Chaumian e-cash goes back to 1987. As to why I didn't sign up for Magic >Money, or E-Purse, of Digibux, or whatever, well, I'm not a merchant. Just >as one could study flight, to use Bob's example, without operating a >passenger service or a flying school, so one can be interested in digital >cash without "opening an account." Right on, Tim. Just don't rain on my parade, or anyone else who's trying to make something happen, for that matter. >Ah, but I never claimed otherwise (perhaps this is what you mean by "your >nonexistant point"). My point was only that digital cash will happen mostly >when it fills a need, or is accepted by customers, not by cheerleading and >by urging people on this list to be pioneers. Cart before the horse, Tim. Most of the new people (say, for 2 years at least) on this list *are* pioneers. I've got 600 people over on www-buyinfo who are there primarily because 90% (!) of the traffic on it is my e$-filtered cross-posts from cypherpunks, and I don't know how many are over here because they like their whiskey neat. Those people are so fired up, they will find a need, or *create* one, if they have to. >The theories about mandarins, lifers, and talents I'll discuss at another >time, maybe. All I'll say is that I think it's too simple a categorization. >Maybe it's a Boston viewpoint. Damn Yankees. Born in El Paso, myself, by way of St. Thomas, Las Cruces, Corpus Christi, El Paso, Anchorage, St. Louis, Mid-MO, Chicago, and yes, Boston. Never knew I was one until you told me... >The folks I've worked with over the years >bear almost no resemblance to any of these categories. Typical Mandarin response. ;-). (just pulling your leg, Tim. Put the Glock *down*...) >In any case, people >will start using digital cash if and when it fulfills some need, or some >need they never knew they had, gets stimulated. Agreed. > >On a personal note--which is weird, since 1000 or more people may be >reading this message, though most probably haven't read this far--I think >it best not to get too emotionally attached to some particular outcome in >the introduction of a new technology. I bet they are, but I'm not attached to Mark Twain or even Digicash per se. It just seems to me, that if you want to get involved in this flying stuff, here's a plane that flies, even if its elevators are stuck on the front. Learn to fly now, and be able to fly the new stuff as it becomes available. If you want to fly, that is. Some people then couldn't help it. They *had* to do it. That's what's happening here, Tim. >I've seen many "prophets" wailing to the world that their >visions _deserve_ success. Not here Tim. I believe you might be projecting, or something. I just want to sell stuff for cash on the net. Then, I want to surfact the financial markets into little tiny pieces... >The technologies which hit the right chord rarely need, or benefit from, >the "evangelists" and "cheerleaders." The Macintosh did not Guy Kawasaki or >any of the other so-called evangelists to succeed. The microprocessor did >not evangelists. The airplane did not. The VCR did not. The cellular phone >did not. I don't believe that for a minute, and on reflection, you probably don't either. Jerry Sanders at AMD. Hell, Tim, you knew Moore, for god's sake. Think about, oh, the Sony guy, whatever his name is, Morita. The people who built the Mac were *possessed*. So was Kawasaki. I'm *still* possessed. What about the *entrepreneur's* reality distortion field. I bet you've seen more than a few, and probably more than a few who were right, or you wouldn't be thrashing your Mac on the net and clipping coupons... >And I can think immediately of several >technologies that had active proselytizers--Ted Nelson, Doug Engelbart, >Marty Lepselter, Steve Jobs, Eric Drexler, fusion enthusiasts, space ^^^^^ >enthusiasts--but in which progress has been stalled or proceeded along ^^^^^^^^^^^^ >different paths for different reasons. I resemble that remark. Sure, Tim some of them didn't make it. But for every one of those (strange you should mention Jobs, right after I mention the reality distortion field, and don't count him out yet, rumor has it Ellison wants him to run Apple when Oracle buys it, god help us all), there are others who did exactly that. Von Braun, or Porsche, or, hell, all I can think of are germans, uh, okay, Bill Gates. >This is a very interesting area for me, and I used to write extensively >about it. Nick Szabo and I had several debates about this, a couple of >years ago. However, no time now to discuss the full implications here. Having been hammered by Nick myself, once or twice, I think I understand this... So. I'm enthused. My enthusiasm is demonstrably contagious. If someone gets enthusiastic about all this on my account, and puts up the king-hell, world-beater, financial-cryptography-killer-ap that's cool by me. Otherwise, it's only bandwidth, which I've wasted enough on for this thread. If you want to make the rubble bounce, go for it. Besides, I usually stay in my cage, these days. Which is where I'm going to go and lurk for another month or so... Cheers, Bob Hettinga PS: Feh ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA (617) 958-3971 "Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell The e$ Home Page: http://www.webstuff.apple.com/~vinnie/Rah >>>>Phree Phil: Email: zldf(a)clark.net http://www.netresponse.com/zldf <<<<<

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