- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: Taxes in the digicash world
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:45 PM 7/30/96, Lucky Green wrote: >At 6:17 7/30/96, Igor Chudov @ home wrote: >[...] >>Another alternative that I see is property taxes and poll taxes,or >>taxes on some commodities such as oil. But incomes seem to be hard to >>track. > >What you also will see is an increase in sales tax. You still got to buy >groceries locally. In the spirit of looking for points to quibble about: * food is mostly exempt from sales taxes, in most states in the U.S. Expect a major protest if a loaf of bread incurs a sales tax--I don't expect it anytime soon. * booze has a high tax rate, in excise taxes which can account for as much as 40% of the final price, plus sales tax. If the tax rises much higher, expect increased black market sales. * electronic and computer goods are often untaxed because many order them via mail-order. There have been proposals to tax out-of-state purchases, but the logistics and legal issues are murky (who gets the tax? and why should Idaho, for example, get the tax revenue for an item ordered from Georgia?). Of course, I'm not an expert in answering Igor's original question about where the taxes will come from. I'm more interested in reducing them, not raising them. --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: RPK Public Key Cryptography
by pgut001＠cs.auckland.ac.nz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tall men in dark suits made Stephen Cobb <stephen(a)iu.net> write: >My apologies to the list if this subject is old hat but someone just pointed >me to the RPK Public Key Cryptography site and I was wondering what people >thought of this particular technology. It's just Yet Another PKC. Look at the history of LUC for a similar example: An amazing new breakthrough in PKC is announced, after a couple of years of analysis by cryptographers it's found to be no better or worse than existing PKC's, but in any case noone uses it because the existing patent covers only the US and expires in a few years whereas the LUC ones cover much of the world and will be around for ages. RPK is a similar case (actually it's in a somewhat worse position, by the time it's been subjected to enough analysis for people to trust it, the RSA patent will have expired, making RPK unmarketable). Other comments on the system: - The inventor apparently has no plans to publish details on the system in a journal or present it at a conference for peer review. - Someone who used to work with him rates him as a fairly competent programmer. His crypto skills are unknown. Given what happened with LUC I predict more of the same for RPK. Peter.

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Blaming the Internet for Terrorism
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This comes from today's (Wed. July 31) LI Newsday, though the byline is the AP: "Bombing Becoming All Too Popular" The Associated Press Washington - The number of Americans attacking and attempting to attack each other with bombs each year has nearly doubled this decade. For every Olympic park or Oklahamo City tragedy, police report dozens of foiled attempts where death and destruction are narrowly averted. [..] The rapid escalation poses a vexing problem for law enforcement. Unlike international terrorists with recognized agendas, these culprits are most often low-profile operators plotting in the privacy of back yards, garages and basements with easily obtained materials and simple instructions straight off the Internet. [..] In 1989, there were 1,699 criminal bombings attemted or carried out nationwide. By 1994, the last year with complete figures, the number has risen to 3,163, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Local cases, which seldom make national headlines, demonstrate the breadth of the threat. [Examples follow...only one names the Internet:] In Baton-Rouge, La., an 18-year-ooold dropout and two friends were indicted this month for stealing bomb-making materials from two high-school chemistry labs, Court records allege the three plotted to blow up a train returning the young woman's parents from vacation to get insurance money, and had followed a terrorist handbook published on the Internet. --- No-frills sig. Befriend my mail filter by sending a message with the subject "send help" Key-ID: 5D3F2E99 1996/04/22 wlkngowl(a)unix.asb.com (root@magneto) AB1F4831 1993/05/10 Deranged Mutant <wlkngowl(a)unix.asb.com> Send a message with the subject "send pgp-key" for a copy of my key.

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Crypto Law and Veincheck
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

http://www.ispo.cec.be:81/ispo/lists/ispo/0464.html ---------- European Crypto Law information sources Robert Horvitz (horvitzr(a)omri.cz) Tue, 21 May 1996 13:22:59 +1GMT Reply to aadamski(a)cc.uni.torun.pl (Andrzej Adamski) who said: My name is Andrzej Adamski, I'm from Poland, Nicolas Copernicus University . I would be very grateful for getting hints where to find information on the current EU encryption policy/ legislation. What about present developments in the area of the European infrastructure of pubic (sic) key look like? ------------------------------------------------------------ Adam, the best place to start your research is at the "Cryptography in Europe" website: http://www.modeemi.cs.tut.fi/~avs/eu-crypto.html To see the wider context, visit the "Crypto Law Survey" website created by Bert-Jaap Koops in the Netherlands, at: http://cwis.kub.nl/~frw/people/koops/lawsurvy.htm The EU and EC seem likely to cave in to pressure (blackmail?) from the American spy agencies and impose "back doors" on any strong encryption package. Unless Europeans stand up and insist that privacy of communication is an essential human right. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Robert Horvitz, International Coordinator, OSI Internet Program Motokov Building - Room 518, Na Strzi 63, 140 62 Praha 4, Czech Rep., tel 42 2 6114-2751, fax 6114-2750, email horvitzr(a)omri.cz ---------- For more on cryptography and encryption, see the IPO search page at: http://www.ispo.cec.be/topic/simple.html As an example, for artful use of crypto, see the "veincheck" proposal at: http://www.ispo.cec.be:81/ispo/lists/ispo/0252.html Social Applications of Biometrics Joe Rice (joerice(a)innotts.co.uk) Tue, 26 Mar 1996 21:28:20 -0800 I would welcome some input to shape the following IT technology. The technology is a physiological biometric based upon the detection and comparison of subcutaneous blood vessels, essentially bar-code reading of people.

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Re: fbi, crypto, and defcon
by TQDB 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Date: Tue, 30 Jul 1996 17:31:25 -0400 > From: Stephen Cobb <stephen(a)iu.net> > To: cypherpunks(a)feist.com > Subject: Re: fbi, crypto, and defcon > Okay, so their boss is part of the law making process, subject to the checks > and balances that exist between the three branches of US government. They > are in a position to supply their boss with data and I am personally > impressed with their grasp of some of that data (it sounds to me like they > are telling their boss that hackers like the ones at Defcon are not the > problem). I think what they are really saying is that they would love to bust most hackers, but since they can't they might as well use some of them to catch the bigger fish. If they truly did believe in the laws they are supposed to uphold they wouldn't associate with hackers (who commit computer crimes) at all. > All of us who have some understanding of these issues need to do our best to > educate the public and the politicians, even if we have to start from the > "See Jane hack" level (pun intended). Otherwise dumb laws will be passed and > then we will have to engage in mass civil disobedience (which I have > personally done in the past). Stopping bad laws from becoming law is a lot > easier than overturning them later. This is exactly one good reason for having additional support for our Hack The Lies (HTL) project. Besides spreading truthful and factual information to the public, we recognize that the government definately could use its share of help from people who know what they are talking about. .TQDB

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Re: Smart cards "a giant leap backwards" - Canadian Privacy Commissioner
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:23 PM 7/30/96 -0400, Richard Martin wrote: >Very little that might be new or enlightening to the world; attendees >of CFP '96 will remember [fuzzily, in my case] the closest thing to >Bruce's counterpart in the states admitting that the USA doesn't actually >have much of a counterpart to the privacy commissioner. Most Central European countries have both privacy commissioners and legal requirements that everyone register their addresses with the police. I'll do without the former if I can also avoid the latter. DCF

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re:WaPo on Crypto-Genie Terrorism
by Vinnie Moscaritolo 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

here is something my girlfriend sent me the other day, after reading the Klinton-Antifreedom/terror news Setting: Germany in the late 30's. Quote from "Stones from the River", by Ursula Hegi. I think this rings true for our country today. The tragic reality is that the majority of people have simply forgotten the urge to question what they read in the news. "The people of Burgdorf went to parades and speeches--some because they genuinely believed in their leaders; others, because not to go would call attention to themselves. Most practiced the silence they were familiar with, a silence nurtured by fear and complicity that would grow beyond anything they could imagine, mushrooming into the decades after the war which, some began to fear, was about to happen. To justify this silence, they tried to find the good in their government or fled into the mazes of their own lives, turning away from the community. They knew how not to ask questions; they had been prepared for it by government and church. Over the years, they had forgotten that early urge to question." Vinnie Moscaritolo http://www.vmeng.com/vinnie/ Fingerprint: 4FA3298150E404F2782501876EA2146A ------------------ "And someone said Hey man did ya see that? His body hit the street with such a beautiful thud.. I wonder if he knew what he was getting into... Or was he just lost in the flood?"

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****Tacoma, Washington Starts Taxing Internet Access 07/30/96 (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi all, Forwarded message: > Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1996 11:26:59 -0400 > From: "Joseph M. Reagle Jr." <reagle(a)rpcp.mit.edu> > Subject: ****Tacoma, Washington Starts Taxing Internet Access 07/30/96 > > >WASHINGTON, DC, U.S.A., 1996 JUL 30 (NB) -- By Bill Pietrucha. > >Tacoma, Washington, has just gained the distinction of being the > >only municipality in the United States to tax Internet Access > >providers (IAPs) like telephone service providers. > > Somebody needs to do their homework. Austin, TX has been taxing ISP's for at least a year now. A recent Internet Provider meeting on this issue resulted in a return to ISP's of a goodly amound of their taxes because of various issues (read that I didn't go to meeting, I don't run an ISP but a SOHO consultancy w/ Internet services). > >The city of Tacoma has extended its six percent gross receipts tax on > >telecommunications services to include Internet services, Information > >Technology Association of America (ITAA) spokesperson Bob Cohen > >told Newsbytes. I have to pay the state 8.25% interest on any funds my customers deliver to me. > >If other cities attempted to follow Tacoma's lead in taxing IAPs, > >Miler said, it could cause the "Balkanization of the Internet, a > >hodgepodge of confusing, conflicting, and difficult to administer > >Internet tax rules and regulations. Agreed. Jim Choate

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Re: DESZIP
by Julian Assange 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Re: Photo IDs (Re: A Libertine Question)
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:56 AM 8/1/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >I can easily make my own photo I.D.s, or even order "fake I.D.s" from >various mail-order outlets advertising in the Usual Places. If I show up at >the airline with two photo I.D.s, one showing me to be "Security Officer >Mickey Mouse" and the other showing me to be "Mickey Mouse, Internal >Security Agency," will I be violating any laws? > >--Mickey Mouse (I just changed my name--if you don't like it, FAA, fuck off) They want "government-issued" photo ID. They haven't said which government have they. Time to get my Barbados driver's license. DCF

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