- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: 6/6 New Yorker anti-crypto, anti-net article
by Stanton McCandlish 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Regarding the author of the anti-net/anti-crypto article, someone says: > I do not have Seabrook's e-mail address, but he is on CompuServe > and it can be obtained from Compuserve's directory. -- Stanton McCandlish * mech(a)eff.org * Electronic Frontier Found. OnlineActivist "In a Time/CNN poll of 1,000 Americans conducted last week by Yankelovich Partners, two-thirds said it was more important to protect the privacy of phone calls than to preserve the ability of police to conduct wiretaps. When informed about the Clipper Chip, 80% said they opposed it." - Philip Elmer-Dewitt, "Who Should Keep the Keys", TIME, Mar. 14 1994

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Re: Crime and punishment in cyberspace - 3 of 3
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Timothy C. May " . . .I don't think in terms of "rights," but in terms of avoidance. . . . . . * If I suspect someone is plotting against me--perhaps I suspect my neighbor across the street is preparing to torch my house--I'd have no problem placing microphones so as to hear him. Or bugging a girlfriend I suspected of planning to kill me for my money." If your neighbor or girl"friend" were plotting against you using email, they could avoid your spying using PGP and anonymous remailers. "So, do we argue for "rights" of privacy? Or do we monkeywrench such technologies? Or do we develop tools and systems to protect our own privacy as best we can?" You could argue and and still not be understood or agreed with. The concept of "rights" is really only meaningful in the context of a group of people, a society which has agreed to band together for some purpose. But since it can't be guaranteed that anyone would be educated on the matter of observing the delineated rights, or that having been educated they would respect them and observe limits upon themselves in regard of these rights, it would be unwise to desist from the development of the tools and systems for self-protection. I can't see where any anarcho-type, or any rational person, would give up the liberty to be creative in developing the ideas which one could get for the design of tools & systems per se, some of which could be applied to privacy or personal safety (although there could be objections to making them commercially available). Blanc

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Remailers: What to do with improperly addressed anon mail?
by ghio＠cmu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

jamiel(a)sybase.com (Jamie Lawrence) asked: > Out of curiousity, how do you handle this mail? The thought occurred to me > once in thinking about the ethics of remailers. What do you do with it? Well, what should I do with it? Sometimes I send them a note and tell them what they did wrong... but sometimes people then get upset because they think I'm spying on them or reading their mail or something. So other times I just delete it and let them figure it out on their own.

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URL for Perpetual Traveler / Previous Taxpayer
by Vincent.Cate＠FURMINT.NECTAR.CS.CMU.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

What follows is from: ftp://furmint.nectar.cs.cmu.edu/security/perpetual-traveler.html -- Vince --------------------------------------------------------- <HEAD> <TITLE> Vince Cate's Perpetual Traveler Page </TITLE> </HEAD> Welcome to <A HREF=ftp://furmint.nectar.cs.cmu.edu/security/perpetual-traveler.html> Vince Cate's perpetual traveler page.</A> Send comments to me at vac(a)cs.cmu.edu. The "Perpetual Traveler" can be a "Previous Taxpayer". People traveling through a country do not have to pay income taxes etc. while they are in that country, even if they are there for 3 to 9 months (depends on country). If you can work over the net, it is possible to work from anyplace. The IRS says that a US citizen has to be out of the country for 330 days of the year to not owe any taxes on your first $70,000. So by moving from country to country you can legally avoid taxes. A home that can move around the world is not really more expensive than home that does not move. For example, the 65 foot long sailboat the "MacGregor 65" is only $149,000 new. This is a good price, and that is probably why they can say "best selling large yacht in history". One family, or 2 couples, could be very comfortable on a boat of this size. It will do over 10 knots under power and 20 under sail. For free information from MacGregor call (714) 642-6830. After the 3 months, or whatever, that the country will let you visit, you can pull up anchor and go on to another country. At 250 miles per day, it would not take long to get to another country, especially in the Carribean where some island countries are 20 miles apart. Boats cost a bit more to operate/upkeep than a house, but they do not have property tax. In PA the property tax is about 3%. For a house as expensive as the MacGregor 65 this is $4,500/year. Note that a self employed person inside the USA needs to earn like $9,000 to have enough "after tax" money to pay $4,500 property tax. If you only move the boat 4 times a year, the annual costs are probably between these two numbers. You can always rent out a room on your boat. Strange as it sounds, it seems you can charge more for the rent of one room than you would be paying in mortgage payments for the whole boat. So with this type of life style, one need not hassle with social security tax, income tax, health tax, property tax, investment taxes, etc. On top of having far more money and freedom, you don't have the paperwork! At this time there is no mailing list for exactly this topic, but there are 2 mailing lists that are probably of interest. The <A HREF=ftp://furmint.nectar.cs.cmu.edu/flotilla/flotilla> flotilla mailing list</A> is for a group of people that plan to all share one full internet connection by keeping their boats within radio range of each other. The second is the <A HREF=ftp://furmint.nectar.cs.cmu.edu/flotilla/live-aboard> live-aboard mailing list</A> for people that either live on boats or want to. I keep a file on <A HREF=ftp://furmint.nectar.cs.cmu.edu/flotilla/wireless.email> how to get wireless email </A> while you are on your boat. Charles Vollum wrote up an article on <A HREF=ftp://furmint.nectar.cs.cmu.edu/flotilla/ham.radio.email> how to use ham radio for email. </A> I also have a list of <A HREF=ftp://furmint.nectar.cs.cmu.edu/security/banks> banks good for world travelers </A> and a <A HREF=ftp://furmint.nectar.cs.cmu.edu/security/README.html> cypherpunk page. </A> <H3><A href=ftp://alex.sp.cs.cmu.edu/www/vincent-cate.html>Vincent Cate</A></H3>

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Re: Crime and punishment in cyberspace - 3 of 3
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Jim Miller Better people make a better world. A committee should be formed to develop specifications describing a good person. The committee could then launch a program to guide society to a future where everyone met or exceeded the recommended specifications. ............................... Better yet, why not build your own! With the growing field of robotics & nanotechnology, you could just grow your own version of the perfect citizen (all in your own image of virtue&morality). There would be no objections, then, to "frequent quality assurance testing to guarantee rapid convergence to the desired goals. [Automatons] who did not meet the specifications would be [rewired into] the program." And there would be no protests or rants regarding privacy, since there would be no need, since everyone would be alike and predictable in their "values" & "ambitions". Blanc

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RE: Censoring the Internet
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Nobody <an50(a)desert.hacktic.nl> Many "electronic democracy" fans worship the results of opinion polls rather than thinking for themselves; they get truly pissed by the possibility that their lemming mentality could be manipulated. .... But all the convicing rhetoric in the world doesn't finally decide these issues; in the end its what specifically we do with our cyberspace technology that will decide how free we are in cyberspace. .................................... I read a statement somewhere to the effect of: When we are faced with a disease, we shouldn't say "what is wrong with the germ"? Rather we should be asking ourselves "what should we be doing to prevent it from affecting us"? Rather than achieving a grasp of methods&means to help themselves, lemmings will instead complain about the need for "good" leadership. This is a good summary from "Nobody" on what I have noticed from my very recent forays into Usenet newsgroups (and other places). Blanc

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CYBERSPACE IS BY NAT
by bmorris＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com RR> > skinheads were jailed for conspiracy to bomb an synagogue, however RR> > synagogue had not actually been bombed. They went to prison. RR> For a group to comit conspiracy they have to actually do something ot RR> just talk about it. Ah, thanks for the clarification. The skinheads had amassed guns and bombs and were clearly past the just-speculating stage. RR> It is my understanding that conspiracy is a felony even if the crime RR> is a misdemeanor... Something which is as legalistically demented as ITAR not allowing the PGP EXE to be exported but which does allow the source and detailed file format changes to be exported! * RM 1.4 B0037 *

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No Subject
by nobody＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

What sort of encryption is used for the Global Positioning System (GPS), operating in the Precise Positioning Service (PPS) mode? Is it one of the military "KY-xx/KG-xx" modes, or "something else"? =====

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Regulatory Arbitrage
by hughes＠ah.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Here a quotation from a book I've been reading: "The eurocurrency markets represent a type of regulatory arbitrage. Eurobanking is a managed financial package that combines the currency of one country (one regulatory environment) with the banking regulations and competitive efficiencies of another country. This repackaging was made possible by improvements in worldwide communications links and information technology. If the regulatory burden becomes too high in one area of the world, the bundle of eurobanking services can be reassembled in another. Hence, national regulators must compete to maintain their respective shares of the eurocurrency business. Competition with respect to lending quotas, reserve requirements, capital requirements, deposit insurance, the taxing and reporting of interest payments, and the taxing of profits, dividends, and capital gains, all measured against any perceived positive benefits of local regulation, governs the geographical distribution of eurocurrency market shares." >From _International Financial Markets_, by J. Orlin Grabbe, formerly of the Wharton School. Regulatory arbitrage is an Important concept, as well as a great phrase. The writer is square in the middle of the mainstream in the business world, and note how effortlessly he speaks of avoiding governments and playing them off against each other. There is a lesson to be learned here--that speaking of internationalization as if it were somehow disapproved of, as if it were not absolutely matter-of-fact, is a mistake. If I refer to the internationalization of retail funds transfer systems, for example, as if someone might not like that, I also ask the hearer an implicit question: "Might you also disapprove?" In a similar vein, exhibiting, with repsect to cryptography, the analogue of teenaged glee in smashing mailboxes, somehow thinking that you've also struck a blow against authority, is another mistake. We need not show up the NSA, we simply want them to lose. Regarding the subject of the quotation, it is vitally important that the residents of the USA who are on this list remember that the key to strategic victory in cryptography lies internationally, not only for the USA, but for every other country as well. If remailers are outlawed or supressed out of one country, the same functionality can be made in another. And so forth. Arbitrage is smuggling, or rather, the transport of one good or service purchased cheap in one place and sold dear in another. Arbitrage always has one of two effects, either a transfer of real wealth to the place more advantageous the buyer (as well as enriching the middleman), or an equalization of advantage. For financial markets, the equalization always happens sooner or later, and the price may either rise or fall in either the source or destination. Arbitrage of regulation almost always leads to equalization, although the time scales are much longer. When equalization happens, it's almost never that the advantage decreases for the destination buyer. Rather, because there are many more than two markets available, any tighter regulation invariably puts those two markets on an even footing in disadvantage with respect to the rest of the world. So the arbitrage of regulation usually leads to a relaxtion of regulation. We need to remember to make it possible for regulatory arbitrage to occur. If it can happen, it likely will, but only if the choice is available. Eric

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cripple quest
by nobody＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

re cripple; i was told that if law enforcement cannot determine which key will unlock the message prior to the message actually being sent over the net, the message will not be decodable is there any truth to this?

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