- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: Meta: The Arguing about the Terms of the Wager Continues
by Rich Burroughs 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:42 PM 4/24/96 -0800, Jim Bell wrote: [snip] >Let Unicorn FIRST identify himself. Then we'll see who's "weaseling." ROTFL. This is getting too predictable... Rich ______________________________________________________________________ Rich Burroughs richieb(a)teleport.com http://www.teleport.com/~richieb See my Blue Ribbon Page at http://www.teleport.com/~richieb/blueribbon New EF zine "cause for alarm" - http://www.teleport.com/~richieb/cause

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Re: [NOISE- Pratical Application] Reasonable people
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have stopped to offer first aid after two traffic accidents, one in Nevada and one in California. Both states have a "Good Samaritan" law which protects people who offer first aid from legal liability. While I have an extensive background in first aid, none of my credentials are current. The practical result is that in neither case did anyone ask me my name. I believe that the police enforce the Good Samaritan laws by making no records which would identify people who might be sued. This applies to rank amateurs or Professors of Emergency Medicine. In the final analysis, I would rather take the chance of being hurt by someone who didn't know what he was doing than take chance that someone would be deterred from stopping by threat of liability. It appears to me that the law also takes this view. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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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ANNOUNCE: new Microsoft Code Signing mailing list
by Microsoft Internet Announcements 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

CodeSign on ListAdmin(a)lists.msn.com CodeSign is a mailing list (discussion list) for discussions on Microsoft's Windows Trust Verification Services, a set of API's which determine whether a software component contains digital certificates that identify it as being authentic software released by a publisher trusted on the local user's system. For more information about Code Signing, see <http://www.microsoft.com/intdev/>. You can subscribe to the regular mailing list or a digest version. To subscribe, send e-mail to ListAdmin(a)lists.msn.com with the following text in the message body (not subject line): subscribe CodeSign your(a)email.address or digest CodeSign your(a)email.address where your(a)mail.address is your actual e-mail address (don't just use "your(a)mail.address"). To unsubscribe, send e-mail to ListAdmin(a)lists.msn.com with the following text in the message body (not subject line): unsubscribe CodeSign your(a)email.address To send a message to the subscribers of the list, send e-mail to CodeSign(a)lists.msn.com.

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Re: Is the public involved in the crypto policy debate?
by tallpaul＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Apr 26, 1996 02:05:40, 'tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May)' wrote: > >(If we were leftist theoreticians, we could debate for years or even >decades whether our movement is truly a mass movement, or just a vanguard >movement, etc.) > >--Tim May > I do not mind being trolled from time to time. Based on my anthropological, political, and journalistic researches, I look at cypherpunks as a heterogeneous, not homogenous, movement. By this, I mean that it can be examined in a variety of ways based on significantly different points. 1) Development (more accurately spread) of public key crypto: definitely vanguard. 2) Development and spread of anon remailers: definitely vanguard. 3) Opposition to CDA, etc.: Part of a smallish mass movement. Participation in the movement definitely limited to a small number of issues involved. E.G. good contributions to publicity; no contribution to issues of mass sexual hysteria around "kiddie porn," etc. 4) Other issues, like future role of e-cash, etc. Not vanguard, not mass movement, a "bunch of loons." --tallpaul

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RE: Mindshare and Java
by Blake Coverett 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I agree that the major innovation, and cypherpunk opportunity, of Java is > in its cross-platform nature, not its vaunted ability to run untrusted > code safely. I'm sorry, I'm just not interested in running untrusted code. > Give me digitally signed code that I can trust, or for which the author > can at least be held accountable, and I'll be happy. Absolutely! > As cool as many of the people on the Java team are, though, I am dubious > that Java is going to live up to the hype. It is still not clear to me > that Microsoft is going to support it seriously in their browser, which by > mid-1997 will be so tightly integrated with the lowest-common-denominator > operating system that there will be no room for Netscape. There was an official announcement at their Professional Developers Conference a few weeks back. In short, full support in the browsers (and apparently MS is now the keeper of the reference implementation on Win32) and also a full blown Java development environment code-named 'Jakarta'. -Blake

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Anti-porn activists' old memo on alt.sex.*, anonymous remailers
by Declan B. McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is a note I came across in my archives hinting at how anti-porn groups used the content of the alt.sex.* groups to pass the CDA, and how they may not exactly be a fan of anonymous remailers. Attached is a memo from Deen Kaplan, previously a vice president at the then-named National Coalition Against Pornography, to other anti-porn activists. Note that John McMickle soon afterwards became a member of Sen. Chuck Grassley's staff and helped recruit witnesses for the July 1995 cyberporn hearings. (You may recall that Grassley was pushing for a law even worse than the CDA.) Some of the names on the To: line are easy to identify, like Rice-Hughes and Jepsen from Enough is Enough! And Cathy Cleaver from the Family Research Council, whom I'm debating in a few weeks. The others I haven't figured out yet. (The FRC is run by Gary Bauer, a former policy assistant to Reagan and a former undersecretary at the Department of Education. Now Bauer heads the FRC, the DC-based lobbying extension of James Dobson's Focus on the Family." Dobson's history includes serving on the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, aka the Meese Commission. Bauer also embraced Marty Rimm's cyberporn study as gospel, calling the ACLU and EFF "porn industry apologists" who are "taking cheap shots at this comprehensive study.") I'm passing this along as an FYI. -Declan My Rimm web site: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~declan/rimm/ The attached article and followup: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~declan/rimm/asst/anti_porn_group_11_22_94.letter Cleaver's op-ed on CDA: "Kids Need Protection in Cyberspace, Too" http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/dl?num=1153 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Note for Donna Rice-Hughes From: Deen Kaplan Date: Tue, Nov 22, 1994 1:43 PM Subject: Alt.sex.pedophilia To: Cathy Cleaver; Dee Jepson; Dianna Denney; Dixie Sanner; Donna Rice-Hughes; Jan LaRue/Lillian; John McMickle; Lori Fender; Maryam Kubasek; Monique/Ginny/Stacy; Paul Maurer; Rick Schatz Here's an anonymous message posted last night on the Usenet Board Alt.sex.pedophilia. REALLY sick and a good example (even if the person is kidding, which is unlikely in this area.). I'll do a demo of how the USENET boards work in the office for D.C. people after Thanksgiving. ---------------------------- Receiving information ... 1. Help I'm here with you and must know more about this group 2. Now what? 3. Now what? --> 4. fun at the hospital Message-ID:<090418Z21111994(a)anon.penet.fi> Path:msuinfo!uwm.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!demon!kaa rna.cc.jyu.fi!news.funet.fi!news.eunet.fi!anon.penet.fi Newsgroups: alt.sex.pedophile.mike-labbe From: an141380(a)anon.penet.fi X-Anonymously-To: alt.sex.pedophile.mike-labbe Organization: Anonymous contact service Reply-To: an141380(a)anon.penet.fi Date: Mon,21 Nov 1994 09:02:17 UTC Subject: fun at the hospital Lines: 10 Those orphan kids in the terminally ill section of the hospital are so fun at night when they are drugged out. I love sucking on their tiny finger-sized cocks and probing their tight holes. Their slender little bodies are completely smooth. They're going to die pretty soon so they won't come back to me several years from now as hairy grown up men blaming me for why they are all mentally messed up. And since they are orphans with no one to look over them except for overworked staff, I could get away with just about anything. ------------------------------ To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help(a)anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin(a)anon.penet.fi

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Re: [NOISE] The Iron Mountain Report
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:33 PM 4/24/96 -0700, Rich Graves wrote: >The author of the Iron Mountain Report was interviewed on PBS a few weeks >ago. It was a really over-the-top parody published in 1967. That's _Nationalized_ Public Radio; any conspiracy that couldn't get somebody on their denying that they were the secret power behind the government is obviously not competent to be the _real_ secret power behind the government. The interview just shows how pervasive they are. :-) Meanwhile, Robert Ludlum's got a new book out, doing another "hidden Nazis-will-rise-again" conspiracy. It's ok, though not as good as his best work. Among other events, the disinformation leaked out by the Neo-Nazis frames many prominent people as Nazis, a critical few of whom really are. And there's a bad parody of a fat talk-show host somewhat to the right of Attila the Hun (Caller: "Double whippo, Arnie!") who gets framed on the air... >Every once in a while, I get mail asking whether I really have contacts in >Sendero Luminoso, since a bit of satire I wrote was quoted in the Web >Review (which made no attempt to contact me before printing the satire as >my position). Foo - even I've had contacts in the Sendero Luminoso, though they all would have strictly denied it - they were just "good Socialist college students" and "immigrant refugees" from Peru, which _does_ have a fairly brutal and sleazy elected dictator. Not everybody in the anti-war business is pro-peace. >Truth is far more fragile than fiction. Sure, cause fiction's supposed to make sense. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215

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Re: coderpunks not elite
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:14 PM 4/25/96, Hal wrote: >From: tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May) >> Well, I was not invited to join the elite and secret coderpunks list, but I >> still have some thoughts on coding and, especially, on the opportunities >> offered by Java. > >As far as I know, the coderpunks list is neither secret nor elite. I >joined it about a month ago, andd there wasn't any problem. Just send >mail to majordomo(a)toad.com saying "subscribe coderpunks". It's just as >easy as cypherpunks. My reference was maybe a tad unfair. It was based on a reading of the hks archives of the coderpunks archives covering the December 1995 foudning. The hks archives no longer being available to me, I can't quote the specific messages, but the secretive and elite nature was discussed in the first dozen or so messages. Widespread knowledge of this list did not become available until February. My conclusion: keeping such a list secret and invitation-only for a couple of months, until L. Todd Masco let the cat out of the bag by announcing that hks was archiving it, is not a "cypherpunkish" thing to do. Having a list oriented toward code is fine, but keeping it elite and secret is a "cabal"-like thing to do. In my opinion, of course. >I do share Tim's concern about the political views of coderpunks >subscribers. Despite the "punks" in the name it seems to be somewhat >more of a mainstream group. Nevertheless I am determined to act as >though the group favors unlimited access to privacy tools by individuals >and to post under that assumption. If it comes to the point that someone >complains there may have to be some air clearing but I don't think it's >likely to come up. I don't disagree _necessarily_ about separate lists. But I think some discussion beforehand would have been nice....were any of you reading this involved in such discussions? I know I wasn't, nor was there any public list discussion that I saw. There are lots of issues we could consider about future directions for our main group, or for sublists, etc. The "by invitation only" nature of the Coderpunks list, at least before the L. Todd Masco announcement of its existence, seems like rather a harsh way of avoiding off-topic posts. It does distress me that the main list is now so bogged down in back-and-forth flames, ad nauseum. And contrary to Perry straw man assertions, I have never argued for this as a desirable thing. My main objection to Perry's objections is that he rarely posts essays or work results, preferring instead to send "perrygrams" stating his unhappiness with some topic. My preference, and I think my posts generally show it, is to avoid "timgrams" saying a topic if off-charter and simply lead by example, as it were, by writing articles and essays I think are germane. Those who don't like my choice of topics are free to delete them. But this is a different thing than saying the current banality of the list discussion is _caused_ by me, as both Perry and Detweiler seem to think is the case. Basic errors of logic covered in Logic 101. >Cypherpunks continues to have a lot of vitality. What I object to most >is the back and forth arguments people get into. I don't mind reading >one message off-topic, but to have the thread drag on for days, with >dozens of messages, is wasteful. People should just make their points >and let them stand. They shouldn't feel they have to keep coming back >and refuting the other guy. I of course agree with Hal on this. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Golden Key Campaign
by mccoy＠communities.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Bill Frantz writes: > At 1:11 AM 4/25/96 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote: [...why do people continue to promote the RSA method?...] > > > >Sure. Because 1) it's a good algorithm for the job, And there are other equally good algorithms which can also do the job. > >2) we've learned it, and have a PGP base behind our inertia, A pretty insignificant base actually (at least compared to the internet as a whole) and supposedly PGP 3.0 will support multiple encryption methods so maybe the RSA reliance can die the ignoble death it deserves. One point left out from the original posting is that a Rabin exchange can use a RSA public key provided that the p and q in the public key are Blum integers (which also lets you use the public key for probabalistic PKE, as well as a few other neat tricks), so changing PGP to support Rabin would not be much of an inconvenience... > >3) The legalities of RSA are well-defined, Yes, and the most well-defined point is that until September in the year 2000 you will pay an arm and both legs to use RSA. > >4) the Stanford patents mostly run out in 1997, unless Roger's suit > > succeeds first, A point in favor of non-RSA public-key methods. > >5) the price of RSA is fairly low, once free RSAREF came out You must be joking. Have you ever tried to deal with RSA lawyers? > >6) the price of licensing Cylink patents is high and/or unpredictable True, but Cylink needs to milk their patents for all they are worth for the remaining 481 days they have left. In a little more than one year they will not be left with much more than a footnote in the crypto history books. > > I will add to Bill's list: > > 7) RSA is the best known and vetted of the Public Key algorithms. Best known perhaps, but ElGamal and Rabin have also been studied in depth (in fact, Rabin is provably as secure as factoring, RSA has not been proven this secure, it is only assumed that it is.) Most public key methods fall back to only a handful of real trap-doors, so there is only a limited amount of vetting to be done (esp. when compared to symmetric encryption methods.) > Some people say that the millennium comes on Jan 1, 2000. Others say it > comes on January 1, 2001. I say it comes on September 20, 2000 when the > RSA patent expires. Nope, it starts on August 19, 1997. After that point it becomes possible to deploy systems using secure public-key crypto worldwide without needing to pay someone royalties... :) jim

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RE: Mindshare and Java
by James Childers 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > As cool as many of the people on the Java team are, though, I am dubious > > that Java is going to live up to the hype. Same here. If someone writes a secure electronic-wallet type system with Java, then I'll be impressed. Until then, all I've seen implemented is kEWL text graphics. > There was an official announcement at their Professional Developers Conference > a few weeks back. In short, full support in the browsers (and apparently MS > is now the keeper of the reference implementation on Win32) and also > a full blown Java development environment code-named 'Jakarta'. Didn't MS ditch their proprietary Java-like language? Interesting, if so...

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