November 2015 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Anarchist roads and free travel
by Zenaan Harkness 03 Nov '15

03 Nov '15

Beginner anarchist alert. Wanting to get a better understanding of possible outcomes. On 11/1/15, intelemetry <intelemetry(a)openmailbox.org> wrote: > Democracy is the tyranny of the majority, and assassination politics > is dangerous in that regard when they are coupled. Private arbitration > agreements with private security forces wherein mobility has > reciprocal agreements (similar to current travel) seems more reasonable. How would we handle road-building rent-seekers (i.e. those who would collect tax/ rent for travel) - i.e. at the moment in Australia banks give loans to private companies to build roads, which by illegal (unconstitutional) contracts, massive rents/ taxes over many decades, are collected from the population? How would the idea of "all have a right to travel anonymously and absolutely freely (free from tax, free from arbitrary punishment)" be manifested in a political anarchy country? How do we manifest a community wide idea of free travel (implying a majority interest in infrastructure built and provided at cost) with the freedom of "rent seekers" and "land owners/ infrastructure builders" to "freely engage in construction and contract with travelers upon the roads"? Is this a prisoner's dilemma? Although all our roads in Australia were free from "all evil tolls" for much of a century, the rent seekers corrupted our politicians with much greese, and now road tolls pop up all over the country. How would political anarchism not "degrade" to the power of financial corruption in a similar way as our demoncratic governments? --- In Australia, our "democratic powers/ goverment" have facilitated illegal contracts and multi decade rent seekers to tax the population on roads already paid for by the government. Notwithstanding that the jetsons era may make the question of roads per se less relevant over time, this question in my mind arises regarding political anarchism and what is termed 'natural monopolies', in this specific thread, roads. The Great Charter, or Magna Carta/ Charter, proscribes that there shall "be no evil tolls" - which means no travel checkpoints requiring fee payment, i.e. tax collection at point of passing, commonly today called "road tolls" (at least in Australia). This was to protect merchants against the taxing intention, and it is a given that this also includes those not engaging in commerce but still traveling. Here in Australia not only do we have the present day continuation of the Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights (and many other Imperial Statutes) active within the jurisdictions of our states (although most people are not aware of this, the courts and legislation are aware of it) we also have Section 92 of our federal constitution which states "trade commerce and intercourse [travel] amongst the states, shall be absolutely free", which interpretation is open to some debate in political circles despite how it reads to the common man. In Australia the Imperial Statutes are firmly entrenched thanks to: - The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act (our federal constitution) which invokes the Crown; - The Imperial Acts Application Act (respectively, in each state, such as New South Wales, Victoria, etc); - The Australia High Court (our highest court) rulings of Mabo and in particular Mabo 2 (I think 1999). Despite what ought be protection, our demoncratic parliaments have sold our roads to the highest bidder, which in our case is nearly always Macquarie Bank. Zenaan

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How a group of neighbors created their own Internet service
by Zenaan Harkness 03 Nov '15

03 Nov '15

A recent example. Such projects are evidently affordable with volunteer(s) doing the work. Same goes for any off-grid network. Perhaps this story will inspire someone to kick off their own little corner of the locally-controlled internet. Zenaan http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/15/11/01/2241241/how-a-group-of-rural-wash… " > [rich people blah blah] In any case, this isn't a poor farming > community - they can afford this sort of large expenditure. Honestly it doesn't seem the expenses were that great, it seems the primary investment is one man who did a whole lot of legwork to rent a microwave link, find relay points, install equipment, do network supervision and maintenance and so on for free. The numbers are pretty much all there, initial investment was $25k that they need to pay back in 36 months. Break-even was 25 users, subtract 25 @ $150 = $3750 in sign-up fee = $21250 / 36 = ~$600 month in down payment. Running income = 25 @ $75/mo = $1875 - $900 in microwave rental - $600 in down payments = $375/mo for running the wireless grid and misc. other expenses = ~$0 in wages. And now they're paying it down faster so they can lower prices, with 50 users / $900/mo + a slightly bigger grid it might drop to $40/mo after the investment cost is paid off in less than two years. That's not expensive, it's super cheap for rural broadband. For comparison, we're paying ~$500 extra per household on top of of the ordinary ~$300 sign-up fee and ~$100 monthly fee for the privilege of getting a fiber rollout with Internet/TV at our cabin here in Norway. On the bright side, after the first twelve months we don't have to use it more than 4 months a year, but it's still ~$2000 for year one and ~$400/year just for the summer. And they're not planning to lower prices, they're planning to recoup the rest of the roll-out costs, pay wages and turn a nice profit over the next 20-30 years. But it's not like in the city where you can connect 100 people in an apartment building at the time, distances are huge and customers few so cost per subscriber will be far, far more expensive so I doubt that we're a cash cow. Anyway to get back on topic, what this community has that others lack is one very skilled volunteer working for free, on a commercial basis it would be way different. " Original: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/11/how-a-group-of-neighb…

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Re: The BlackList
by Ryan Carboni 03 Nov '15

03 Nov '15

> On 11/01/2015 01:52 PM, Juan wrote: > > On Sun, 1 Nov 2015 01:16:15 -0700 > > coderman <coderman(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > >> On 11/1/15, Juan <juan.g71(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >>> ... > >>> It seems (kinda obvious) to me that to get rid of 'high > >>> ranking' targets you need a 'professional' service, agree? > >> > >> no, this is movie plot thinking. > > > > Ha. That's a funny remark because I was just thinking that AP > > does sound like literary fiction so far. > > Well, the idea has been kicked around for 20 years, and little has come > of it. Maybe that's because it's still unworkable. How are people going > to bid anonymously? Is Tor good enough for that? A viable AP market > would draw TLAs to Tor like dogs to shit. And they would cooperate. > > Also, how would bidders pay anonymously when targets were killed? There > is no inherently anonymous payment system that's widely available. Maybe > anonymized Bitcoin, after a few mixes through Tor, would make the nut. > Or maybe creative carding. Maybe y'all reading this could manage it. But > what about the clueless masses who might be motivated to bid? > > I don't know whether AP would take down governments. Hell, I'm not even > sure whether that would be prudent. But I am certain that many bidders > would go down, through cluelessness or system compromise. The theory, I thought, was a simple prediction market. Based on actuarial statistics by Social Security, people usually have less than a 1% chance of dying per year (Fidel Castro seems to have a 0% chance), so guessing the right death year is pretty "lucky". The person who guesses correctly would receive the pot of money. The real problem is that the prediction market will be regulated out of existence. You have any idea how regulated the resale of life insurance contracts are? That and, how do you trust the prediction market? It has to be a company with a mailing address, otherwise one could just run away with the money. Personally, I believe a good prediction market would be one limited to predicting deaths and the overthrow of governments.

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Meet the U.S. Defense Firm Supplying Iran’s Internet
by Razer 03 Nov '15

03 Nov '15

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The Black List
by jim bell 03 Nov '15

03 Nov '15

A friend called last night, alerting me to a show called "The Black List". Apparently that episode involved an AP-type plot. Unfortunately, I only saw the last third or so of the show. http://www.nbc.com/the-blacklist/episodes?__source=360i_NBC_TVE_2015&WT.src… is probably episide 305, air date 10/29/2015; within a day or so it will be watchable on the website above, I think. I should probably demand a story royalty. Jim Bell

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DJB: Advanced Code-based Cryptography
by coderman 02 Nov '15

02 Nov '15

http://cr.yp.to/talks/2015.06.05/slides-djb-20150605-a4.pdf no TXT auto-conversion as the graphics make this less useful.

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Stealing The Network (novel) free ebook
by Michael Best 02 Nov '15

02 Nov '15

If you haven't read it before, someone kindly posted Stealing The Network series of novels online as a PDF. http://www.lyraphase.com/doc/security/Stealing%20the%20Network/Stealing%20t…'s%20Edition.pdf "Stealing the Network: How to Own the Box is a unique book in the fiction department. It combines stories that are false, with technology that is real. While none of the stories have happened, there is no reason why they could not. You could argue it provides a road map for criminal hackers, but I say it does something else; it provides a glimpse into the creative minds of some of today's best hackers, and even the best hackers will tell you that the game is a mental one." - from the foreword by Jeff Moss, President & CEO, BlackHat, Inc. *Stealing the Network* is a book of science fiction. It's a series of short stories about characters who gain unauthorized access to equipment and information, or deny use of those resources to the people who are meant to have access to them. The characters, though sometimes well described, are not the stars of these stories. That honor belongs to the tools that the black-hat hackers use in their attacks, and also to the defensive measures arrayed against them by the hapless sysadmins who, in this volume, always lose. Consider this book, with its plentiful detail, the answer to every pretty but functionally half-baked user interface ever shown in a feature film. One can read this book for entertainment, though its writing falls well short of cyberpunk classics like *Burning Chrome <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060539828/$%7B0%7D>* and *Snow Crash <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0553380958/$%7B0%7D>*. Its value is in its explicit references to current technologies--Cisco routers, OpenSSH, Windows 2000--and specific techniques for hacking them (the heroes and heroines of this book are always generous with command-history dumps). The specific detail may open your eyes to weaknesses in your own systems (or give you some ideas for, ahem, looking around on the network). Alternately, you can just enjoy the extra realism that the detail adds to these stories of packetized adventure. *--David Wall* The stories of the Stealing the Network series entertain in the same way that "war stories" from fellow hackers and security professionals often keeps a more intimate audience's interest: by mixing intriguing situations with juicy technical detail that can serve as a useful take-away. No one will accuse these books of containing fine literature, but that's not really the point. The stories are well written enough to keep you wanting to know what will happen next, while the technical information is as accurate as you're likely to see in fiction. Segments involving hacking are written and illustrated with enough attention to detail and length to serve as introductory educational tutorials for the topics (including web application hacking, reverse engineering, and wireless security). Most of these scenarios are believable as parts of larger-scale operations. --McGrew on Amazon <http://www.amazon.com/review/R1Z4P33XFA3MWL/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN…>

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Bitcoin Halloween... A Dangerous Idea... They're Terrified We'll Use It
by grarpamp 02 Nov '15

02 Nov '15

Bitcoin (Andreas M. Antonopoulos) code.talks 2015 (ehem. Developer Conference) https://www.codetalks.de/Published on Oct 29, 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB-CXu5ECIg&t=43m17s It's Halloween, so terrify them, start using it tonight and upport your favorite fiendish authors and friends... ;-) bitcoin: 14Chgo1sK3N3ng8sZMkbxVkH4EZ4E8dHXu

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Re: [tor-talk] OTR and logging
by grarpamp 02 Nov '15

02 Nov '15

On Sun, Nov 1, 2015 at 10:15 AM, Michael McConville <mmcconv1(a)sccs.swarthmore.edu> wrote: > Tor Messenger *definitely* shouldn't log by default. This defeats much > of the purpose of private chat, and many people back up unencrypted to > the cloud. I think the OTR people specifically suggest that you don't > log. You're a fool if you think your "private chat" isn't loggable or being logged just because whatever app you're using doesn't have a logging / recording button. Fix your belief... regardless of whether or not the button exists. That's all I'm saying.

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Multnomah County Common Law Court
by coderman 01 Nov '15

01 Nov '15

hey Jim, Multnomah County Common Law Court sounds awesome. are there details about this effort anywhere online? best regards, [ from Washington County :]

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