While reading the report of the Presidential on Commission Critical Infrastructure Protection, the Public Key Infrastructure Study and the draft plans for Internet-2, it is becoming even more aparent what government schemers plan to do with encryption technology. Some of the statements literaly call for key escrow/recovery systems and others imply it extensively when one reads between the lines. They want security on the Internet-2 to be like the Berlin Wall. What amazes me (I guess not, really) is all of the so-called free market corporations that are in collusion with governent to enable this new Internet Security State. I have long thought that if government is going to be successful at forcing key recovery onto the nation in law that it was going to have to have the help of the major corporations who are looking for the money. It was only one year ago that IBM was lobbying congress for the contract on the new key escrow system congress was considering and the FBI, et al were demanding. Never turn your back on the merchantilists. The IRS, right now, is calling for assistance with their _second_ attempt at revitalising their archaic networks, mainframes and software. Again, it's the major corporations rushing in to their aid while looking for those "big dollars". [IRS just spent 4 Billion a few years back on the very same effort and have virtually nothing to show for it] Corporate America Saves the IRS. What a headline. Corporate America wants the IRS to be able to survive to tax us all into oblivion, when what they ought to do is turn their backs on the IRS, walk away and let them fall in on themselves just like the Soviet Union did. If we're lucky, around December 31, 1999, the IRS will crash along with their computer systems. Sparticus
Sparticus wrote:
Corporate America Saves the IRS. What a headline. Corporate America wants the IRS to be able to survive to tax us all into oblivion, when what they ought to do is turn their backs on the IRS, walk away and let them fall in on themselves just like the Soviet Union did. If we're lucky, around December 31, 1999, the IRS will crash along with their computer systems.
Sparticus
I'm not sure that there is anything they can do about it anyway. The contract to fix the IRS's Y2K problem won't be awarded until October of 1998 (!!). That leaves them 8 months until software oblivion to fix the problem. They have an estimated 60 to 80 million lines of code to fix and test. (some of the code they don't have source code for, some of it is in assembler) The Social Insecurity System started their fixes around 1992 and have averaged (with 400 programmers) 1 millions lines of code debugged and tested per year for Y2K. You do the math. This wouldn't be a problem if the IRS was a self-contained entity, but we all know that isn't true. I've downloaded their request for prime contractors to fix the thing. It includes dataflow diagrams for most of their *known* systems. Using my PDF viewer I had to zoom 8 times (at about 2-3x per zoom) to go from the total system view to the point where individual systems began to resolve. The interconnectivness between their systems is unbelievable. From a security standpoint that means that the weakest link in the chain determines the viability of the whole system. And the IRS's accounting systems are tied into the accounting systems of every major corporation in the US. The Fed, Wall Street, the US Government's Command & Control System and the obiting GPS sattelite system all have the same problem. (ohh...and I forgot to mention the national railroad car routing system -- "where was that wheat seed destined for?") The end result would be an interesting study in complexity and catastrophe theory. For me, I will be on an extended fishing trip somewhere in the Rockies. If the system crashes then the joke will be on the megacorps that volunteered to fix the thing. All those US FRN electronic ledger entries won't be worth the diskspace that holds them. Or so it would seem. As the programmers who work on the system realize that it will be impossible to fix the system, they will be buying hard assets and leaving the Y2K project like rats from a sinking ship. The best thing that congress could do now is (1) chastise the agency for alleged abuses and push for (2) a simpler tax code that doesn't necessitate excessive bean counting for the populace and (3) eliminate the "income" tax and replace it with a VAT tax or preferably (4) get the several states to pony up a percentage of their sales taxes to the fed - to be held in escrow every month by the states and forwarded unless the state has a major gripe. That would gets the feds attention real quick. It would seem they are implementing (1) and (2) already. Could (3) and/or (4) be coming? I can't believe, giving the paranoia of the Feds, that they are going to take the risk of letting the Y2K destabilize the entire nation. Despite the fact that the people in charge piss me off sometimes I really like the fact that 7-11's open every morning, that I can pick up a nice greasy breakfast from Burger King if I wan't and that I can buy a new car or fly to visit my family or place a long distance telephone call or buy a new 9 gig HD for my Linux box or any of the 10 thousand cools things that are available in civilization. If any of the federal infrastructure protection specialists are listening in on cypherpunks (and we know you are), then maybe you ought to pay some real close attention to the things that are the most likely to bring about TEOCAWKI (the end of civilization as we know it). Y2K is much more of a threat that the four horseman of the infocalypse. What really worries me is an idea I call "the population carrying capacity of civilization". With high technolgy in place the PCC is much greater than with low technology. I think thats obvious. With so much of civilization (especially the financial sector) depedent on computers, I think that carrying capacity is about to go way down. Lets say it goes down 10% on Jan 1, 2000. That would be .1*250,000,000 = 25,000,000 (dead/starved/homeless?) I know I'm probably making a judgement error somewhere. I'm certainly not a Christian post-contructionist-millenialist. I'm not waiting for the savior to come down and bring us all up to heaven. I don't savor living in the wild for longer than my camping trip and am not a "survivalist". I'd just like to keep getting my greasy Burger King breakfast, browse my Barnes and Noble on the weekends, have a decent cup of java once in a while and and enough time for my network feed to upgrade to a 320kbps xDSL line. Something tells me that if the IRS, the FED, Major Banks, US Army C&C, GPS Satellites and the Railroad shipments fail within months of each other we are not going to be browsing Barnes and Noble on the weekends. Jim
When everyone can publish it is more difficult to control a society. We offer this free. Billy James Title: Leap into the Future <IMG SRC="http://206.185.185.94/images/CoLogoMid.gif" WIDTH=159 HEIGHT=56 X-SAS-UseImageWidth X-SAS-UseImageHeight ALIGN=bottom> Press Release FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Contacts: Scott Barger - Fallon McElligott 612-321-2797, Scott's email Bill James - JIT 612-484-9549, Bill's email ---------------------------------------------------------------------- St Paul, MN James Integrated Technologies (JIT Corp), under its Leap into the Future program to educate web users on the ease of electronic-commerce, is contributing $6.5 million in free eCommerce software. The first 10,000 users to registered at www.webclerk.com will receive a free license for WebClerk, regularly priced at $649. JIT Corp's Leap into the Future, introduced on December 16, 1997 is designed to educate business people that they can safely and cost effectively sell and provide service to their customers on the internet. "The $6.5 million gift to our customers will give them confidence that they do not have to fight through the current fears, costs and technical difficults associated with getting on the internet. With free WebClerks they simply leap past the current obstacles and start doing business on the web. "Our objective is to increase our customer's profitable sales," says JIT Corp President Bill James. "In the near future, eCommerce will replace FAXing, just as FAXing replaced telex. We have removed the technical complexities of commercial web site implementation, made it powerful enough for big business and priced WebClerk so that even the smallest business can afford to safely provide service and sell on the web." <IMG SRC="http://www.jitcorp.com/images/webClerk_Exit72b.gif" X-SAS-UseImageWidth X-SAS-UseImageHeight ALIGN=center> Author and President, Bill James, initiates the $6.5 million "Leap into the Future" Education Program with a leap from 10,000 feet over a wintery Minnesota landscape. <IMG SRC="http://www.jitcorp.com/images/webClerk_flat.gif" X-SAS-UseImageWidth X-SAS-UseImageHeight ALIGN=center> WebClerk is a commercial data base, prefabricated web site and server. Users simply import their data and graphics and begin taking orders on the web. An experienced webmaster, Jason Bright, www.brightech.net, notes, "WebClerk is a straightforward and extensive way to get a commerce site up and running overnight." WebClerk offers customers numerous features, including technical libraries, interactive customer support and FAQs, forums, catalogs, order entry, order status and secure credit card approvals. The local webmaster controls the data available for WebClerk to display. Customers collaborate with WebClerk to access areas of interest as well as make online purchases. "As the Interactive division of a major advertising and marketing agency (Fallon McElligott), we look for solutions that give our clients a strong and secure presence on the web," says Lynn Heiberger, President of Revolv. "Most solutions with the capabilities we wanted cost at least $100,000. WebClerk helped us meet our objectives for less than $10,000." With WebClerk, small businesses have the same abilities as large businesses to leap into the future. "We're a two-person company making custom labels for home beer brewers. Changing our web catalog was expensive and beyond our technical ability," says Ernie Bishop of www.ToTheLabel.com. "With WebClerk we built our catalog in a few hours and are now able to update it in just minutes." WebClerk has EDI and data synchronization capabilities. When used with theCustomer, enterprise software, it becomes an integrated part of a total client/server solution running both the web and normal aspects of the business. A single user version of theCustomer comes bundled in WebClerk. Setup requires a connection to the Internet, router or modem and a fixed TCP/IP address. No other software is required for normal operation. To manage secure credit card approvals there is a $35 per month and $.25 per secure transaction service contract. WebClerk runs at a company's site or at a host service provider. WebClerk runs on either a Macintosh (32 Mbytes of RAM) or Windows NT/95 (64 Mbytes of RAM). James Integrated Technologies (www.jitcorp.com or www.webclerk.com) is located in St. Paul, MN. They provide software, training, catalog hosting and support to enable their customers to become technically competitive, sales and service driven. # # # <IMG SRC="http://www.jitcorp.com/images/10530_jitProductLine.gif" X-SAS-UseImageWidth X-SAS-UseImageHeight ALIGN=Center NATURALSIZEFLAG="3">
At 12:57 PM -0700 11/11/97, Jim Burnes wrote:
I'm not sure that there is anything they can do about it anyway. The contract to fix the IRS's Y2K problem won't be awarded until October of 1998 (!!). That leaves them 8 months until software oblivion to fix the problem. They have an estimated 60 to 80 million lines of code to fix and test. (some of the code they don't have source code for, some of it is in assembler) .... The end result would be an interesting study in complexity and catastrophe theory.
For me, I will be on an extended fishing trip somewhere in the Rockies.
Yep, except I plan to be at home, in my compound, with a several-month supply of food. (I'm on a well, and I have a generator, so a loss of the grid in the ensuing chaos would not devastate me. Plus, central California has a pretty mild climate...) The dumbest thing to do is to pay big bucks, as many are, to be in some exotic location to celebrate the rollover of the digits (if not the century, as we all know). Imagine being stranded in Cairo or Machu Piccu during this meltdown.
If the system crashes then the joke will be on the megacorps that volunteered to fix the thing. All those US FRN electronic ledger entries won't be worth the diskspace that holds them.
Or so it would seem. As the programmers who work on the system realize that it will be impossible to fix the system, they will be buying hard assets and leaving the Y2K project like rats from a sinking ship.
The consensus in the survivalist community is that the Y2K problem will devastate the IRS system, exactly as Jim describes here (and as we discussed on the list a couple of months ago, mid-September, under the thread title, "Preparing the Remnant for the far side of the crisis"). Too many interdependencies, too much old code, not enough time or money to make the changes, and probably not even enough knowledge about how to go about it. All it will take are a few systems failing. Checks arriving late, systems crashing, a slowdown in an already slow system. (And of course the common workarounds, such as keeping the computer clock set at 1998 or 1999, will not work, as many benefits and IRS programs have dependencies on the clock year, on the ages of taxpayers, on previous year's payments, and on and on.) The loss of confidence in a highly-automated--but nevertheless creaky--system will be glorious to watch.
If any of the federal infrastructure protection specialists are listening in on cypherpunks (and we know you are), then maybe you ought to pay some real close attention to the things that are the most likely to bring about TEOCAWKI (the end of civilization as we know it). Y2K is much more of a threat that the four horseman of the infocalypse.
You need to see the _bright side_ of the problem! By undermining the system, the changes that are needed will come sooner. And I think the theory that tax protestors have been sabotaging the system for decades is probably on target. Obfuscating the code, destroying source code, inserting logic bombs.
Something tells me that if the IRS, the FED, Major Banks, US Army C&C, GPS Satellites and the Railroad shipments fail within months of each other we are not going to be browsing Barnes and Noble on the weekends.
Just remember three words: Lock and load. --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
participants (4)
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Bill James -
Jim Burnes -
Mix -
Tim May