- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

ATF_ear
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

5-6-96. WaPo reports on ATF and LEAs being ostracized by benign feds and citizens fearful of being housed with them. ATF_ear

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Re: Why I Pay Too Much in Taxes
by jamesd＠echeque.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:16 PM 5/5/96 -0700, Sandy Sandfort wrote: >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > SANDY SANDFORT > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . > >C'punks, > >On Sun, 5 May 1996, Alan Horowitz wrote: > >> didn't the feudal vassels only pay 33% ? > >Actually, no. When I used to edit a magazine, I commissioned an >article about how much "tax" slaves, serfs, etc. paid. That is, >how much of what they produced, did they get to keep; how much >went to their masters. The surprising, cross-cultural answer my >researcher/writer found was that they got to keep everthing they >produced except 5-10%. That's a lot better, percentage-wise, >than for modern "tax slaves." In the early feudal period, ordinary knights did not live well. They were only moderately better off than peasants, and yet to support one knight, you needed a startlingly large number of peasants, a fact that kings were continually unhappy about and continually trying to fix. While it is difficult to assess the tax rate, because taxes were in kind, it was clearly very low by modern standards. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re: your mail
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Heh. On the ISP-TV show that Brock Meeks and I co-host, two weeks ago we not only described how easy it was to modify a handheld radio, we had a guest who demo'd cell-snooping on the air. -Declan On Wed, 5 Feb 1997, Bovine Remailer wrote: > http://www.cnn.com > > Congressman demonstrates > ease of cell phone snooping > > > > >

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Re: alias servers (al la alias.c2.org)
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"des(a)juno.com" 27-APR-1996 04:36:45.71 >On Fri, 26 Apr 1996 20:30:38 -0400 (EDT) Black Unicorn ><unicorn(a)schloss.li> writes: >>Is anyone besides c2.org running an alias server? >There's a few of them - nym.gondolin.org, nym.alias.net, and >alias.alias.net are the others that leap to mind just now. >Of course, having just previewed the Juno "free-email" >service, I might count it also. How much information do they actually want, and how much do they check? I seem to recall that they wanted some info for giving to the advertisers and for targeting the advertising. -Allen

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Anonymous info
by admin＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

You have requested information about your account at anon.penet.fi. Your code name is: <FAILED(a)anon.penet.fi> Your real e-mail address is: <cypherpunks(a)toad.com: not found> Your nickname is: <> Your password is: <> Regards, admin(a)anon.penet.fi

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Re: mail-to-news fun
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:18 AM 2/6/97 -0000, you wrote: >Unfortunately, you don't really have a choice about what kind of >speech you are supporting if you run a remailer. Don't fall into the >trap of saying, "I want to give people complete freedom of anonymous >speech... EXCEPT...." As abhorrent as we may find the homophobic >hatemongers from the "freedom-knights" list, I guarantee a lot of >politicians would object more strongly to the "Help, I might be gay >and my parents will kill me" post. Once you set up a system for >content-based censorship, don't think you can stay in control of it. The problem isn't homophobic hatemongers who use their own names or nyms or no name, or even get my remailer's name associated with that - I can reply to complaints or file them in the handy bit bucket. The problem is forgers signing _other_ people's names to their hatemonger postings, causing the innocent third party to catch all the flames that the forger was trying to generate. Stewart wrote: >> On the other hand, I don't want to support postings titled >> "ALL FAGS MUST DIE" with a forged signature and email at the bottom, >> and I especially don't want to post that from my remailer without >> indicating that anything posted by a remailer might be forged. >> That's why I shut down my previous remailer - the forger only >> posted one forged message; the person whose name got forged >> got flamed severely by dozens of people who objected to "her" posts. >> Blocking the gay newsgroups cuts down on that kind of trolling, >> but also cuts out the "Help, I might be gay and my parents will kill me" >> traffic that remailers are supposed to help with. Guess I should have been more clear.... >As for forgery, I do add > X-Warning: Sender address is unverified and may not be authentic. >to every article that goest through my mail2news gateway. Does anybody read X-Warning: headers? Not all newsreaders even show all the headers. It's a good start, and that's clearly the place in the system to insert it. >Additionally, I have a fast source-blocking system set up, so anyone >in whose name articles are being forged can immediately stop it by >mailing <srcblk-request(a)nym.alias.net>. (This doesn't source-block >them from the remailers, just the non-anonymizing mail2news gateway.) That helps, at least if the spammer is doing a lot of it (or if the spam is from a broken gateway program or whatever.) But for the troll that killed my remailer, one message was enough. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp # (If this is a mailing list, please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)

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Re: John's: In anarchy -everyone responsible
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:41 PM 2/5/97 +0000, Attila T. Hun wrote: > >+Put simply, "anarchy is not the lack of order. It is the lack of >+_orders_." > > disagree. pure anarchy is not the lack of "orders" --pure anarchy > implies that everyone is imbued with that perfect sense of > responsibility. >From which hat do you pull this rabbit? > >+> anarchy is only possible in an ideal world where _everyone_ >+> assumes not only responsibility for themselves, but for the common >+> good. no malice, no greed, no need for assassination politics.... > >+No, that's traditional thinking and that's wrong. See AP part 8. >+Freud believed (as "everyone" else believed, even myself, before AP) >+that anarchy was inherently unstable. But it ISN'T, if the tools of >+AP are used to stabilize it. And no, no altruism is necessary for AP >+to work as well; no individuals are being asked to sacrifice >+themselves for the common good. Rather, they are given the >+opportunity to work to achieve a reward offered, cumulatively, by a >+number of citizens. > > aah, but that is the difference between a _pure_ anarchy and a > _popular_ anarchy. A pure _anarchy_ is sufficiently idealistic in > that _noone_ lacks the necessary resonsibility to keep society > moving, each individual in their own niche. Why, exactly, is it "necessary" to "keep society moving"? Isn't that somewhat of a contradiction in terms? (particularly when you are discussing the subject, "anarchy." It seems you don't really understand what the word "anarchy" means. Sigh. > As long as there is > perfect responsibility in a perfect anarchy, then there is no need > for AP. Are you saying that for a world that has ALREADY achieved anarchy, and we presume "perfect responsibility," AP is not necessary to maintain this state? Well, that's a rather limited assertion; some would argue it's practically meaningless. Isn't that somewhat like saying, "A perfectly-balanced inverted pendulum needs no mechanism to keep it pointing straight up."? True, perhaps, but how do you get that "perfectly-balanced" part right? > AP is a negative, or _punative_, influence; I might liken it to the > Catholic Church which is a religion of fear, and an instrument of > political control. Actually, it's quite the opposite: AP is the absolute prohibition on and/or destruction of any "instrument of political control." Now, to a person who thinks that the natural state of the world is a condition of political control (and it wouldn't be hard to understand why a person could come to this conclusion, given the bulk of history), the ABSENSE of political control "looks like" political control. This is, obviously, akin to the optical illusion where you stare intently at a pattern of color on a page (the American flag is often used) for a minute or two, and then you suddenly glance towards a white sheet of paper on which, as I recall, immediately appears a complementary flag of green and black stripes, and black stars on a yellow field. AP destroys the mechanisms that societies use for much political control. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: CryptoAnarchy: What's wrong with this picture?
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"s1113645(a)tesla.cc.uottawa.ca" 29-APR-1996 02:04:15.24 To: IN%"EALLENSMITH(a)mbcl.rutgers.edu" "E. ALLEN SMITH" CC: IN%"cypherpunks(a)toad.com" Subj: RE: CryptoAnarchy: What's wrong with this picture? Received: from tesla.cc.uottawa.ca by mbcl.rutgers.edu (PMDF #12194) id <01I43C5TODPC8WWL2O(a)mbcl.rutgers.edu>; Sun, 28 Apr 1996 23:12 EDT Received: by tesla.cc.uottawa.ca (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA25041; Sun, 28 Apr 1996 23:17:36 -0400 Date: Sun, 28 Apr 1996 23:17:36 -0400 (EDT) From: s1113645(a)tesla.cc.uottawa.ca Subject: RE: CryptoAnarchy: What's wrong with this picture? In-reply-to: <01I43B16HT2U8Y53CU(a)mbcl.rutgers.edu> Sender: s1113645(a)tesla.cc.uottawa.ca To: "E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH(a)mbcl.rutgers.edu> Cc: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Reply-to: s1113645(a)tesla.cc.uottawa.ca Message-id: <Pine.3.89.9604282225.B28833-0100000(a)tesla.cc.uottawa.ca> X-Envelope-to: EALLENSMITH Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Mime-Version: 1.0 On Sun, 28 Apr 1996, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote: >> Currently, yes... but the divide between rich and poor is growing. >> (So long as this divide is determined by merit, and the poor still have >> enough to survive, I'd call this a good trend. So would various other >> people on this list, perhaps without my caveats.) In other words, the >> middle class is going >I agree with your caveat. It's where the anarchists get me skeptical. The poor still having enough to survive is the most significant reason I'm not an anarcho-capitalist. There are a few others, but that's the main one. >Someone sent me some US income tax figures. It would seem that the vast >majority of personal taxes are paid by the rich and high-end upper-middle. >So I'll eat my words and agree with you, talking about the rich makes >quite a bit of sense. I sort of do wonder how many of those "corporations" >are small businesses and individuals working as companies. Time for me to >go find a national stats book. Despite its agreeing with my point (thank you), I'm not sure if I'd consider income taxes to be enough of the story to go by them alone. Federal level, yes; state & local, probably not. I am willing to bet that property taxes are mainly paid by the relatively wealthy, given how much of personal capital tends to get tied up in a home. Sales taxes are more evenly distributed. However, the economic changes I discuss should result in this becoming true, even if it might not be completely true currently. >Of course only talking about the rich makes things so much easier. Yes. In a capitalist society based on merit, the rich are the ones who matter in the long run. -Allen

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Re: Why I Pay Too Much in Taxes
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"jk(a)stallion.ee" "=?ISO-8859-1?Q?J=FCri_Kaljundi?=" 5-MAY-1996 11:47:15.29 >Here in Estonia there was a proposal made in the parliament to remove >taxation on corporate income (right now there is a proportional corporate >income tax of 26%), which should bring more foreign investments into >Estonia and also make Estonian economy develop faster. Estonia I think is >one of few countries where there is a possibility of accepting this kind >of law. Of course European countries, USA and different international >financial organisations are very against this kind of law. This law would >apply both to companies and to self-employed private persons (farmers for >example). Let me guess the reason for the objection... it would make siting an offshore-type company in Estonia to avoid taxes possible. -Allen

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Police tactics question
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've often heard of the police/postmaster mailing someone child pornography prior to going in and busting them for possession of it. What are the legal matters in such cases? Thanks, -Allen

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