- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

What will it cost to let Big Brother watch?
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[This story was scheduled for page 18 of this week's Time magazine, but got cut at the last minute and replaced with a Diana investigation update. Background: Previous CBO cost estimates released in May and July focused on versions of SAFE that dealt only with exports. This estimate not only covers the costs of operating snooperware systems; it predicts that some products may drop crypto and users may abandon its use if such a requirement exists. Enjoy. --Declan] ****** ENCRYPTION What Will It Cost To Let Big Brother Watch? By Declan McCullagh High tech firms battling what they call an Orwellian anti-privacy bill in Congress are challenging a new government study. Last Friday the Congressional Budget Office stuck a price tag on a bill that would ban the manufacture of telephones, computers, and software that the FBI can't easily monitor. The amount consumers would pay: an estimated $200 million to $2 billion a year. But technology groups say the true cost would be astronomical. "It would be the greatest technological challenge the U.S. software industry is facing today, larger than the year 2000 problem. We don't know how to do this," says Jon Englund of the Information Technology Association of America. He says that since the CBO study focuses on computer programs and not the Internet, the true cost would be hundreds of billions higher. A huge chunk of existing technology would have to be redesigned, and plans to protect cyberspace from eavesdroppers would be derailed. That's an acceptable tradeoff, say the plan's backers. "Organized crime, drug organizations, and terrorist organizations have the ability to use encryption and render law enforcement folks unable to have access," says Rep. Michael Oxley (R-Ohio), a backer of the FBI's plan. The House Commerce committee is scheduled to vote on Oxley's proposal on Thursday. ------------------------- Declan McCullagh Time Inc. The Netly News Network Washington Correspondent http://netlynews.com/

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InfoWar 19 / GeigerBurg III Text
by A Player To Be Named Later 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

B ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The True Story of the InterNet Part III InfoWar Final Frontier of the Digital Revolution Behind the ElectroMagnetic Curtain by TruthMonger <tm(a)dev.null> Copyright 1997 Pearl Publishing ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- InfoWar Table of Contents * Extra! : News From the Front ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Extra! : News From the Front ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [News Flash! From: http://www.turnleft.com "The Home of Liberalism on the Web"] What They Don't Want You to Know by Auto-Correspondent "http://www.cjnetworks.com/~cubsfan/conspiracy.html" In order to understand InfoWar you need to realize that everything is controlled by a CypherPunks list made up of Cult of One members with help from Nobody and Anonymous. The conspiracy first started during the Censorship Experiment in majordomo(a)toad.com. They have been responsible for many events throughout history, including the InfoWar. Today, members of the conspiracy are everywhere. They can be identified by their Code writing. They want to electronically forge TruthMonger posts and imprison resisters in Silicon Valley using Trei Transponders. In order to prepare for this, we all must Nuke DC. Since the media is controlled by Declan McCullagh we should get our information from Black Unicorn's yellow-menace writing in blanc snow.. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just as he had suspected! A Player To Be Named Later read the output of the Java script at Left Turn's 'Make Your Own Conspiracy Theory' page. Left Turn had confirmed everything he had been discovering on his own, even when he had discovered facts and information which pointed toward completely contradictory conspiracy theories. A Player To Be Named Later recognized that this was positive proof that the roots of the Great Conspiracy had spread throughout the very fabric of reality, itself. He now knew that the conspiracy was no longer just some outside entity which lived in the shadows around him, waiting for him to let down his guard before it sprang its waiting traps and enclosed him with its vicious iron jaws. He now knew that it went much, much deeper than that. Now, he knew the conspiracy was in his Mind! A Player To Be Named Later had immediately dropped all of his other InterNet personas and erased all signs of them from his hard drive. With the new knowledge he had gained, he knew that he could no longer trust even himself. The first sign that the conspiracy had managed to spread throughout both reality and virtual reality were the posts to the CypherPunks mailing list by Damaged Justice. Subject: Internet putting truth in danger From: Damaged Justice <frogfarm(a)yakko.cs.wmich.edu> Organization: Somewhere just far enough outside of your jurisdiction To: cypherpunks(a)Algebra.COM THE generation that has grown up on The X-Files poses a threat to the future of journalism, Fergal Keane, the BBC's Asia Correspondent, said last night. Subject: Assassination Politics of a sort There's a bounty on Gordie Howe's head. And Gordie isn't laughing about it. Howe, 69, is planning to file a police complaint against a California radio personality who offered a bounty to have "the old fool pummeled back to reality." Subject: FBI vs Silicon Valley: Guess Who's Winning? The likely outcome: a tactical retreat by industry to avoid an all-out rout. The electronic wizards seem to have met their match in a Washington cop named Louis Freeh. Subject: Trac[k]ing the Successful Drug User By deploying their questionnaire on the Web, the researchers are hoping to use the relative anonymity of the Net to access a "hidden population" of drug users who would be disinclined to give accurate reports of illegal use to face-to-face interviewers, Nicholson says. In a short series of posts, Damaged Justice had managed to subtly point out that: The InterNet, in the hands of the public, was a threat to truth. Assassination Politics would lead to the death of heroes such as Gordie Howe. Louis Freeh is going to kick the electronic wizards' butts. Successful people on the InterNet are all secret drug users. A Player To Be Named Later had seen the duplicity in Damaged Justice's posts long before this, just as he had in the posts of Se7en. Se7en purported to be a diabolical hacker turned lecturer, working the security and LEA (law enforcement agency) circuit, but it had become obvious that it was they who were working him. Se7en had got caught up in the LEA's child pornography ruse and wrote a lengthy diatribe to the CypherPunks list about the millions of pedophiles lurking in the shadows of the InterNet. This came at a time which was convenient for adding support to the agendas of several of the government shills working the list at that time. A Player To Be Named Later had followed the trail of alleged pointers and addresses that were provided by Se7en, only to find the usual spooks lurking in the background. It was obvious that the spooks were doing their best to cultivate a crop of genuine pedophiles by seeding the InterNet with pointers to trails of perversion that they had carefully laid out themselves. No doubt they would keep their self-generated perverts on ice until it came time to drag them out into the public eye for one of their show-and-tell displays of the 'good fight' they were putting up against the evil InterNet. A Player To Be Named Later hadn't run his usual analysis on the past posts and email traffic of Damaged Justice and those connected to him, but he was not sure that it really mattered anymore, anyway. There were indications that FUD/DoubleSpeak/SpinDoctoring/VirtualTruth-whatever you wanted to name it-had reached critical mass. He took another look at one of Choate's posts to the CypherPunks list: Subject: 6 USAF Crashes in 7 days = InfoWar? From: Jim Choate <ravage(a)ssz.com> To: cypherpunks(a)ssz.com (Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer) Just a thought... The connection was obvious. A number of stories made it into the periphery of the mainstream press concerning the U.S. spooks campaign to murder 'bad' foreigners by introducing defective parts into the products they bought for their armed forces. Then the U.S. forces immediately got hit with a rash of high-profile 'accidents' to their own military units. It was a clear message to the U.S. spooks that two (or more) could play that game. So clear, in fact, that the Pentagon publicly and privately pulled in the reins on a variety of normal and special operations, in order to shake the trees for defective parts and defective soldiers. (Mostly the latter.) The Real Guy had planned an expose on the background events taking place in this area, but had decided not to do so, uncertain as to why he had made that decision, at the time. Now, A Player To Be Named Later realized that it was because FUD (Fear, Uncertainty & Disinformation) had become the rule of the day, and there was no longer anyone left to preach to but the converted-and the converted were becoming unconverted at an increasingly rapid rate. It had become obvious, I suppose, when it took so little effort on the Pentagon's part to cover up the pair of rogue U.S. Air Force pilots who had been positively linked to the Circle of Eunuchs by the secret task force dedicated to rooting them out of their hiding places deep within the bowels of government and corporate agencies around the world. It was not surprising that they had managed to cover up the involvement of the nuclear bomber pilot, since they were able to label her a sex criminal before she had taken any overt action that would serve to trigger the interest of those paying close attention to such things. It was her proximity to the Author's current location that had led to her discovery. The retired Air Force intelligence officer who had been assigned to shadow the Author in Do Well, Saskatchewan, had alerted Canadian Customs to notify him any time that soldiers from Minot Air Force Base crossed into his territory. Although she never made physical contact with the Author, her mere presence in close proximity to him led to an in-depth investigation that turned up enough 'coincidences' to require her removal from service. What was very troubling, however, was the fact that another of the Author's contacts, from the Air Force base at his old stomping grounds in Tucson, had been able to break formation on a training run, fly halfway across the country with live bombs, almost making it to the site of the McVeigh trial in Denver, and yet it hardly rated a "Gee, I wonder why he did that?" in the mainstream press. Tentative suggestions that the pilot was 'emotionally troubled' were eaten up by the press, despite evidence to the contrary from his friends and relatives, so readily that the Air Force never even had to release the 'psychiatrist reports' that had been hastily prepared to be 'leaked' to the right sources, if needed. A Player To Be Named Later wondered if all reporters for the mainstream press were not, in fact, still incarcerated in the press compounds set up for Operation Desert Storm. Were the 'backgrounds' they appeared to be reporting from in reality just virtual creations from inside their media prison? A pilot carrying live bombs makes a beeline for the site of the Oklahoma Bomber's trial; a truck full nuclear warheads goes missing; soldiers on a base are the target of an armed assault; the pilot of a nuclear bomber is shanghaied on curiously slim pretexts; a horde of major armed forces figures suddenly resign or are shifted to non-sensitive positions-and the world hardly seems to notice. When a single former Russian General, however, with close connections to the spooks, writes a no-brainer book with unsupported claims about nuclear suitcases falling into the hands of the US's proclaimed 'enemies,' then the mainstream press snaps to attention and gives full coverage to the dark threat posed by theoretical, unseen, dark-skinned people who we will need to be protected from, in the future. "Gee, I wonder why he would do that?" A Player To Be Named Later said, sarcastically, while visualizing a dark-skinned person in a foreign country purchasing a nuclear suitcase from CIA-run Russian spooks. "I suppose that if there was hard, non-refutable evidence of an Air Force soldier purchasing a nuclear suitcase and going AWOL, headed for Washington, DC, that this would be the reaction of the mainstream press. But let a foreign 'darkie' try it, and all of a sudden we need to suspend some more basic human rights, even if it was a BATF shill who was being run by a CIA connected, former German intelligence operative who is related to a high-ranking German politician who was involved in the Iran-Contra drugs-for-arms scandal." A Player To Be Named Later reached for a bottle of Scotch sitting behind his laptop, taking a slow pull off of it as he reviewed the signs of the death of investigative journalism in the past few years. The CIA had used Woodward and Bernstein effectively during their assault on the Presidency at the close of the Nixon scandal. The problem was that it inspired a plethora of uncontrollable impersonators who wreaked havoc with their efforts at FUD control. So they orchestrated the movement of investigative journalism into the mundane mainstream of everyday life. The sheeple didn't care about world politics and behind the scenes power struggles. Their real interests lie in secret videos of an employee dipping his dick in a coworker's coffee; a mechanic putting the old distributor cap back on and charging the customer for a new one; a black mayor snorting coke and getting a little trim from the ladies of the night. All of this became breaking news which required the full force of the media digging into the dark corners of these people's lives. Until the world's nasty little secrets became just another everyday, run of the mill part of normal life. Now, Media Reality had finally approached critical mass, as foreseen by a variety of voices crying in the wilderness, from George Orwell to Marshal McLuhan. Now, it was only a matter of time. A Player To Be Named Later read the "Internet putting truth in danger" post by Damaged Justice, once again: Mr Keane, delivering the Huw Weldon Memorial Lecture at a television convention, said that he was worried about the growing influence of the Internet, and the conspiracy theories that are aired on it. God help us if things deteriorated to the point where ordinary people put the mainstream media 'truth' in danger by pointing out the obvious to people who didn't really want to know why a U.S. Air Force pilot would head for the site of McVeigh's trial with a load of live bombs. Maybe he just got lost He told the Royal Television Society's Cambridge Convention that the rash of rumours about the circumstances of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales showed that there was a public appetite for speculation and fantasy. He said: "Will the generation growing up on The X-Files really want to choose calm, considered reportage when they have science-fiction and fantasy?" "Calm, considered reportage." A Player To Be Named Later intoned, solemnly, thinking about the first interview he had seen by the major media with someone who had been close to the Princess's fatal accident. "Explosion." That was the first, and only, time he had heard that word used by someone who had been present at the time of the accident. By the time the rest of North America had awoken that morning, there were only reporters feeding the world the disinformation being officially released by the authorities. And in a world where reporters will dig up a dead body to do DNA tests to see if the deceased was, indeed, fucking Tom Cruise, the major networks somehow managed to 'lose' the footage of interviews with the original witnesses, offering, instead, interviews with people who thought that maybe something was perhaps taking place down there in the tunnel, but who really knows? We were told that there were no witnesses to the accident, yet we were still fed unlikely reports of a motorcycle with photographers on it zigzagging in front of the death vehicle at over a hundred miles an hour, and sundry other inanities reeking of 'now you see it, now you don't' spin doctoring. He said that the trend threatened to plunge reporting into the "rumour-ridden gloom of the Middle Ages". God forbid that unseemly rumors might spread concerning a man heading a covert organization involved in running illegal drugs and arms ascending to the Presidency after succeeding the front-man who had come to power as a result of those illegal actions, and who had invaded a foreign country to capture the drug-dealing monster who had been his closest bum-buddy during his spook days. God forbid that Joe Average should be exposed to the knowledge that a succession of their Presidents were backed by the big bucks made by their friends and relatives in business with the Nazis right up to the end of World War II. Knowledge such as this was dangerous knowledge that would put the spoon-fed "truth" of the mainstream media "in danger" if the InterNet was allowed to become a purveyor of 'unofficial' or 'non-approved' news. A Player To Be Named Later thought of the three days of intensive press coverage in which a multitude of mainstream media personnel spent hour upon hour adding fuel to 'official leak' inspired rumors while not seeming to be able to get any information at all on the players who were part and parcel of the media's daily business activities. He had been waiting to see the pictures of the concrete column that the heavily armored death vehicle had supposedly hit at over a hundred miles per hour. Nothing. {In Toledo, or Detroit, or some other 'cable channel' city, a day or so later, some no-name John Doe was killed after his vehicle struck a concrete column on a local road structure. There were reporters from a number of media sources there, getting close-ups of the vehicle, the column, and the damage to it, the broken scraps of concrete at the accident scene. A Player To Be Named Later saw it two or three times that day, as the media ensured that all the circumstances surrounding the death of John Doe would be subjected to the light of mainstream media 'truth.' He saw pictures from a variety of different angles, obviously taken in the interest of satisfying his 'right to know' all of the details surrounding the death of John Doe, Anywhere, USA.} ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre" "WebWorld & the Mythical Circle of Eunuchs" "InfoWar (Part III of 'The True Story of the InterNet') ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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InfoWar 19 (Part III of 'The True Story of the InterNet)
by A Player To Be Named Later 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Coalition letter opposing Oxley amendment -- from Apple to USWest
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is an encouraging letter, especially given the number and breadth of firms that signed on. But this section strikes me as telling: >We urge the Committee to reject the Oxley-Manton amendment and any other >form of domestic encryption control. Then the committee should reject even the "original" draft of SAFE, which has the first-ever domestic encryption control: penalties for the use of crypto in a crime. When crypto is widespread, //any// "crime" (like posting "indecent" materials?) will involve crypto. Domestic controls on encryption are not a reasonable tradeoff for lifting export controls. Don't sell out my rights to make a quick buck. (Then of course there's White's "compromise" language floating around that would double these criminal penalties. And Oxley -- in an effort to split the coalition -- is circulating draft language that might exempt some forms of mundane crypto-devices from his crypto-ban. Who knows? Maybe some Congressmen would vote for Oxley II in hopes of staving off Oxley I. But all these "compromises" are dangerous.) Advice to undersigned firms: Tell your lobbyists to block //all// encryption legislation that might come out of Congress. Then fire them. Spend the millions of dollars on R&D. Get crypto in the hands of the grandmothers of America. Or if you're not going to fire your lobbyists, at least order them not to try and push a bill through. I know it's difficult; that's all they know how to do. But, you see, not only is such a plan doomed to fail, it likely will backfire and threaten all of our freedoms in the process. -Declan ====================== September 22, 1997 The Hon. Thomas J. Bliley, Jr. Chairman House Commerce Committee 2125 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 Dear Chairman Bliley: We are writing to express our strong opposition to the Oxley-Manton amendment to HR 695, the Security and Freedom through Encryption Act (SAFE), which the Commerce Committee will consider this week, and to any form of government domestic controls on encryption. The Oxley-Manton amendment would impose unprecedented restrictions on the domestic manufacture and availability of encryption, thus potentially compromising the security of the nation's telephone system and the Internet alike. The amendment would: * prohibit the domestic manufacture, sale and importation of any encryption product or service unless the government is given immediate access to the plaintext of communications and stored files without the knowledge of the user; * prohibit network service providers, including telephone companies and Internet service providers, from offering encryption products or services unless communications can be immediately read without the knowledge of the user; and * give the Attorney General unprecedented, broad new powers to establish standards for encryption products and services. Encryption technologies are the vital tools consumers and businesses need to operate with security and privacy in the information age, and are a cornerstone of electronic commerce. Government domestic controls on encryption are incompatible with the consumer, corporate, and national security benefits of the national information infrastructure. Numerous communications products and services are now under development that incorporate encryption as an essential feature. Oxley-Manton will stifle these new products and services, end the deployment of market-driven key recovery systems, and undermine the potential of the new communications media for electronic commerce and the promotion of democratic values. * Strong encryption will not only ensure privacy but also help prevent crime on the network. However, by mandating trap doors in all domestic encryption products and communications networks, the Oxley-Manton amendment will make the personal records and communications of individuals and businesses more vulnerable to hackers, terrorists, industrial spies and other criminals. Put at risk will be medical records, tax returns, private email, business proprietary information and transactions, attorney-client communications, and cellular phone conversations. * Oxley-Manton's broad requirement for "immediate access" to decryption keys without knowledge of the user would force Americans to forfeit their constitutional right of privacy as a condition of participating in the information age. * Oxley-Manton invites disastrous industrial policy. It is industrial policy with criminal sanctions attached. The amendment authorizes the Attorney General to promulgate technical requirements for all encryption products and gives the Department of Justice prior approval authority over all encryption systems for computers and telecommunications. This will stifle innovation. It will drive encryption expertise out of this country. The market should be allowed to develop its own solutions, many of which in fact will meet law enforcement's needs within our existing system of legal authorities and safeguards. * Oxley-Manton will be ineffective in keeping strong encryption out of the hands of criminals. Criminals and terrorist groups will not use a system that gives the government access to their decryption keys. In fact, the FBI has admitted in Congressional testimony that criminals will always have access to strong unbreakable encryption. We urge the Committee to reject the Oxley-Manton amendment and any other form of domestic encryption control. Sincerely, ACL Datacom, Inc., California American Electronics Association American Automobile Manufacturers Association Americans for Tax Reform America Online, Inc. Ameritech ANS Communications, Inc., New York Apple Computer, Inc. Ashton Communications Corp., California and Texas Bell Atlantic Bell South Bowles Farming Co., Inc. Business Software Alliance Center for Democracy and Technology Commercial Internet eXchange Association CommerceNet Compaq Computer Corp. CompuServe, Inc. Computer & Communications Industry Association Computer Software Industry Association Consumer Electronic Manufacturers Association Counsel Connect Crest Industries, Inc. DataXchange Network, Inc. Direct Marketing Association Electronic Data Systems, Corp. Electronic Frontier Foundation Electronic Messaging Association Epoch Internet Fiber Network Solutions, Inc., Columbus, Ohio Genuity Inc., a Bechtel company IBM Corp. Information Technology Association of America Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers - US Activities International Communications Association Intuit Inc. Internet Providers Association of Iowa Microsoft National Association of Manufacturers NETCOM On-Line Communication Services, Inc. NetINS, Inc., Iowa Novell Online Banking Association National Association of Manufacturers National Retail Federation Netscape Communications Corp. Phoenix Media/Communications Group Pro-Trade Group PGP, Inc. RSA Data Security, Inc. SBC Communications Inc. Securities Industry Association Silicon Valley Software Industry Coalition Software Forum Software Publishers Association Sun Microsystems, Inc. TheOnRamp Group, Inc., Ohio Trusted Information Systems United States Council for International Business United States Internet Council United States Telephone Association U.S. Chamber of Commerce US West Voters Telecommunications Watch

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Arab youths bypass government's CyberPatrol Net-censorship
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - Badr knows his way around the Internet. He easily sidesteps government attempts to block access to the pornographic sites that have lured him and other young Arabs to the "information superhighway." "They close doors, but I can get in through windows," said Badr, a 20-year-old who scoffs at the struggles of conservative Arab governments to police cyberspace. With the Internet growing more popular, the sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf are becoming like Western parents trying to keep pornography away from children. But it's not just young people that leaders worry about in these strict Islamic societies, where women cover in black veils outside their houses and public mingling between the sexes is discouraged. Kisses and foul language are edited out of foreign movies, and magazines arrive with pages torn out and photos of women inked over in black to hide even a hint of cleavage. Enter the Internet and the cry for censorship of pornography - and in some cases politics - grows louder. All the region's Arab states but one, impoverished Yemen, which cannot afford an effort to police the Web, are working to limit access to Internet sites. Etisalat, the only Internet provider to the seven states of the United Arab Emirates, set up software blockades after government officials complained about free access to the Web. A "proxy cache server" cuts out sites deemed offensive by Etisalat, which is partly owned by the government. Khaldoon Tabbaza, publisher of the Jordan-based Arabia Online service, said some attempts at censorship get ridiculous. "There is software programmed to block sites which contain certain keywords such as nude, sex and breast. So if you're interested in getting access to information about Middlesex county in the United Kingdom, research about breast cancer or - a chicken breast recipe, you cannot," he said. Despite the government efforts, many Arab youths search out material on the Internet virtually unchallenged. Badr, the young Emirates hacker who showed off his Internet skills on condition only his first name was used, is evidence the system doesn't work. Clicking his mouse, he moved through a series of sites and soon he's looking at naked women and pornographic video images, complete with sound effects. Robert, a Lebanese who also insisted on using only his first name, thwarts an Arab taboo almost as strong as that against pornography - talking to enemy Israel. "I spend two to three hours online (several times a week) chatting with people in Israel. Its very interesting for me to exchange thoughts and opinions with the people I was brought up to view as my enemies," said Robert, a 24-year-old sales executive based in Dubai. "We do exchange some tough words when some sort of violence erupts in the region, but I think that is part of getting to know each other." Qatar and Oman are the only Persian Gulf states with even fledgling diplomatic ties to Israel. The other countries have no telecommunications or mail links to the Jewish state, but e-mail via the Internet sidesteps that. Qatar and Oman both try to block access to pornographic sites, however, using such software as "Cyber Patrol" and "Net Nanny." Kuwait's Communications Ministry is working on a system of blocking access to proscribed Internet sites. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, one of the most conservative Muslim countries, has yet to officially join the cyberspace age. It has set up a committee to oversee the introduction, but - with the wide range of Saudi taboos - few expect the Internet to soon enter everyday life in the kingdom. Still, even in Saudi Arabia, people find ways to track down scandalous Internet sites. Saudis who can afford it make long-distance telephone calls to dial up Internet networks in other countries, mainly in the Emirates and Bahrain, but also in Britain. The problems of censorship grow with the Internet's popularity. The Emirates' Etisalat has 20,000 subscribers and an estimated 100,000 users. Internet cafes have opened in Oman and Qatar and in Dubai, one of the seven states in the Emirates. An official at Qatar Telecommunications Corp., speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid offending government and religious leaders, conceded that access to offensive material on the Internet could not be completely blocked. But he insisted it could be controlled. Others simply refuse to recognize the problem. "Most of our customers come here for the fun of it," said Ali Mohammed, manager at an Internet cafe in Qatar. "They are not interested in pornography."

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Persistent Persona
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Interesting Statistic in WSJ
by Miner 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

% of labor pool working for S&P500 companies = 14 % % of labor pool working for government = 14.5% S&P500 increase in productivity is running about 3.9%/year Government 0.5% per year. The 0.5% is probably attributed to the ever increasing number of citizen units that end up in a prison working for 55 cents an hour, 1,000,000 plus units and counting. Do they offer licence plate stamping courses in jc?

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Re: The Taxing Problem (fwd)
by Jean-Francois Avon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 22 Sep 1997 21:31:23 -0400 (EDT) From: Jean-Francois Avon <jf_avon(a)cti02.citenet.net> To: e$(a)thumper.vmeng.com Subject: Re: The Taxing Problem > Few jurisdictions have begun to grapple with the issue, but they > will, since many of them around the world are starved for > revenues. And when they do, their tax authorities will discover > the wonderland quality of the Internet. Two jurisdictions--the > state of Florida and Tacoma, Wash.--recently tried to impose > some level of taxation on e-commerce. It is not everybody who say that their only wish is to get our keys for the sake of reading our love letters... [see later remark] > a Web site based in a low-tax jurisdiction. Distribution through > the Internet could make the tax authority just another > superfluous middleman. Since when the tax man was a middleman? > problems. The very concept of "permanent establishment" in an > international tax context as the basis for taxation is > unworkable in the information age. Basically, the law of causality starts to catch them up. Money is an expression of Man's Reason, expressed through it's productive abilities. Since taxing is always coercitive, it goes against individuals's best judgment. So, when there is nothing to physically coerce, they loose the ability to tax. > The time to explore Internet taxation issues is now--before > electronic commerce really heats up, before the enormous > economic potential it offers is lost in a welter of confusing, > conflicting, and counterproductive tax policies. "Economic Potential", Newspeak for "confiscation of production to finance other's peoples dreams". And they realize that if they don't clamp on it *now*, it'll go through their fingers like fine dry sand. "To explore the [...] issues": Newspeak for "to bully the Freedom-of-e-commerce groups", Newspeak for "to figure out a way to keep milking them without killing them". > Legislatures > worldwide need to hear from the business community about the > promise of electronic commerce, and about the need to protect it > through wise and coordinated tax policies How in the hell tax policies will "protect" the electronic commerce? Easy: just the way the Mafia used to "protect" commerces from burning up... Newspeak Master. > --policies that take > into account the way the Internet really works. Newspeak for "how to keep milking, or rather, keep bloodsucking them without killing them? And accessorily, how exactly does it work? In a totally non-private way. So, *naturally*, businesspersons will want to protect their privacy. But how in hell is the govt be able to do *any* monitoring of transactions if the transactions are encrypted? Duhhh... Note to Unicorn: how does 2+2 ? :-) > > Maybe the business community needs to take the first step. > Corporations should initiate the debate on how to create tax > policies that do not cripple electronic commerce. Peoples on Death Row are more lucky:: they don't get coaxed to weave their own hanging rope... Why concede them their screwed-up, leech mentality basic premises? In no way should we engage in this discussion. All we need to do is to expose our basic premises and say that the case rest. > There's only > one way to move Internet commerce from here to there, and that's > to engage in some forward-looking discussion. I.e. there is only one way to make us swallow their Newspeak: to dazzle us with their fancy and rhetorics in order to make us abandon our basic premises. But will we? :-b --8== Ciao jfa

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Re: The great GAK crack (making GAK economically impossible) (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Tue, 23 Sep 1997 17:36:01 -0400 (EDT) > From: Ray Arachelian <sunder(a)brainlink.com> > Subject: Re: The great GAK crack (making GAK economically impossible) > That all depends on how they are set up to accept such key requests. Fer > instance, say they set up a nice litte web site that takes in credit > cards... can we say ping flood boys and girls? Can you say 'trace'? > Suppose they set up a mail in system where you have to mail letters to > them. We simply go through every magazine we find and send subscribtion > requests to that address. As most mags will happily send a free issue > this will do wonders... Send them to "Joe Smith, Care Of Key Escrow..." Can you say 'mail fraud'? > If they set up a phone line, we call the phone line and keep it busy... Can you say 'phone trace'? > If they set up a system whereby mistakes have to be refiled, then we > simply all march down there and demand that we get our keys registered and > we always make mistakes in something or other, or we forget our ID's. This works if it happens to be in the current location of an individual, seems pretty unworkable considering the geographic distribution of cpunks. > Denial of service attacks are always possible somehow or other... It's a > question of what we're willing to donate to the effort. Provided you can pay the bill to keep it going AND you use some form of anonymity (which I doubt you could hold up for long). ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Need Help with IRS Problems
by David C. Treibs 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

David C. Treibs Fredericksburg, TX 78624 sirdavid(a)ktc.com Hi. We are in trouble with the IRS, and we need help. For religious reasons (explained below), we do not have Social Security numbers for our children, the oldest of 4 being 5 years old. Last year we sent in our return, as we have always done, without SSNs for our children. My wife and I do have social security numbers, and we sent those. IRS sent us a letter saying they were disallowing our exemptions since we had no SSNs for them. They gave us the opportunity to contest their disallowance, which we did by sending them our children's birth certificates; and letters from our parents, and a letter from our pediatrician, stating the children we claimed were indeed our children and our dependents. We don't have a problem proving that we are claiming legitimate dependents. IRS accepted the information we sent them, and accepted our exemptions. This year we again sent IRS our return without numbers for our children, but this time we included the letter of acceptance for last year's return, and again they said they are disallowing our exemptions, and they want $1,175.79. I called the telephone number on the letter and spoke with the lady who answered, explaining what we did last year and how the IRS accepted our tax return. The lady said "now we have new rules." She asked, "What religion are you," as if it mattered. When I told her we were Christians, she paused as though to consult some paperwork, and then she said, "those children need social security numbers or you cannot claim them." She mentioned the Tax Reform Act of 1996 and Publication 553 as being the enabling documents that brought on this change. That same day I called U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith's office and explained the situation. The nice lady in the San Antonio office said she would pass the information to the Kerrville office, and they would do what they could. The lady in the Kerrville office made several inquiries. She repeatedly said we had the right to appeal, and she sent us a copy of: --Internal Revenue Code: Income, Estate, Gift, Employment and Excise Taxes ss 1001-End As of Sept 15, 1996, Volume 2. Subtitle F, Ch. 61B, Sec 6109(a)-6109(h). Sec. 6109(e)--Repealed Is the rather odd heading for the only part I could find in the portion of the Code they sent me that says you must have a SSN or you will not be allowed an exemption. I wonder if that means the section is repealed? But then, the probably have it in some other section that the SSN is required. See IRC Sec. 151 (97) below. --What appears to be a news release titled: Valid Taxpayer Identification Numbers Needed For Returns 1996 IRB LEXIS 344; IR-96-50 --Internal Revenue Code...This section is current through 105-15, approved 5/15/97. Subtitle A. Income Taxes Chapter 1. Normal Taxes and Surtaxes Subchapter B. Computation of Taxable Income Part V. Deductions for Personal Exemptions IRC Sec. 151 (1997) (e) says no exemption will be allowed unless the Taxpayer Identification Number is included on the return. At present we are awaiting a letter from IRS, which we assume will state that we must either provide SSNs for our children or pay up, and they will probably give us 60 days or less to do either. Having received the above distressing information, we called a San Antonio, Texas, CPA, Ken Flint, a former IRS agent who now specializes in helping people in trouble with the IRS. He said it would cost us more to fight them than to simply pay the extra money. He sounded sympathetic, if somewhat busy, and told us we could do the appeal if we knew the law and IRS procedures. Unfortunately, I know neither. Perhaps at this stage you could help us. I need to hear from someone who has successfully appealed this sort of thing and won. What are the applicable laws? What is the case law in this matter? What are the IRS procedures in these matters? Are there any laws that might give us an out, such as the Religious Rights Restoration Act, and other such high sounding laws? Is there an attorney out there who wants to make a precedent out of this for us and all the other like-minded folks? If you have no direct knowledge of IRS laws and procedures, perhaps you could pass this to a forum or organization or individual who could. While we are aware of the various movements such as the sovereign citizen, the patriots, tax protesters, and so on, we prefer to work within the system to win our case. This is simply our preference. We don't have a problem with proving that we are not making bogus claims on our tax returns. We'd be happy to give them whatever reasonable proof they want. We do have a big problem with giving our children a government number. The Bible gives the responsibility of raising children to parents, not to the government or any other entity. Forcing Social Security Numbers on children represents a major violation of parents' God-given responsibility. The SSN's powers can be divided into two basic categories: monitoring and control; neither of which is within government's purview in dealing with children. These are entirely the parents' job, Hillary Clinton's postulations that "It Takes a Village" notwithstanding. Once a child has a SSN, they are forever a blip on the government radar, to be tracked, and to be the recipient of whatever government decides it must foist upon children and their families. SSN's are already used in our public school district to track students. Much of their test scores and who knows what personal data is in the district's computers, including a SSN. The district told us it probably won't be long before all this data is sent to the state, and how long will it be before this information ends up with the federal government? The Clintons are working to push us into nationalized health care, including government health care for children. Did you ever wonder how they plan to track all these children, to ensure they are receiving all the "benefits" of their plans? Very likely, the SSN. The "benefits" might include "inoculations" against pregnancy, which amounts to powerful birth control/abortifacient drugs, parental consent not needed or desired. Then, of course, there is the "education," accompanying this government intrusion into child health, which is irreconcilably opposed to my beliefs. The Clintons are also working to push us into the UN Rights of the Child Treaty, which shifts many parental rights and responsibilities to the government. The Clintons want to bypass parents and directly access children. How do you think they plan to monitor and enforce compliance with this horrible treaty? The SSN, in my opinion. Once every child has a SSN, it will also be easier for the state to nose in on the parent's job. With the recent birth of our fourth child, we were told that a state social worker from the welfare department would be visiting our home, and the home of everyone who has a child. If our child had a SSN, they could easily computerize all her data and then link it to any other data from us, our other children, and so on. It could be done without SSNs, but it would be more difficult and time consuming, and on a large scale, next to impossible. The state of Texas provides a good example of what a state will do when given access to the power of the SSN. Starting this year Texas requires SSNs to issue a driver's license. Now that they have linked the driver's license with a SSN, they can easily access a person's records, including court records, and anyone not paying child support may be denied a driver's license. This is just one example of the power of the SSN, and how government can use it to force its agenda on the populace. Whatever government grants or allows, it can withhold or restrict based on whatever is politically correct at the time, if they have the tools to do so. When people who disagree with you hold power over you, and when they want to extend that power to your children, you better be ready for trouble. The SSN enables anyone with access to the right data bases to know every address you ever had; details about your job, income, and taxes; school records; all financial transactions not made with greenbacks; probably all your telephone and utility details, including all your phone calls; doctor, hospital, and other medical details; all court and police records; and on and on and endlessly on. This is all your personal information, available to government at the snap of a finger, and this information is power. Now imagine if every child has a SSN, that power will extend down to the womb even more than it does now. We are not willing to give the government power over our children. Why should we, when children are none of government's business until they reach adulthood? Why tempt government with all that power, when they have already proven they will abuse it? For Liberty, David C. Treibs (sirdavid(a)ktc.com)

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