November 2019 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

No, Mr. Busby, there is a Santa Claus.
by jim bell 13 Nov '19

13 Nov '19

No, Mr. Busby, there is a Santa Claus. Dear Mr. Busby, On the Cypherpunks Archive web page, https://cryptoanarchy.wiki/blog/2018/07/05/the-cypherpunks-mailing-list-arc… , you said: "I have an uneasy feeling that many of the posts from this era may already be irrecoverably lost. If this is true it would be a great shame for future generations who want to learn about this vital period of internet history and development. There is an argument that perhaps the list participants would like their privacy preserved, however I don’t think it is a strong one. An open-subscription mailing list is ultimately a public forum. Posting to it is an act of placing information into the public domain." No, Mr. Busby, you need not worry about that specific possibility. There were clearly hundreds of people who subscribed to the CP email list, even as early as mid 1995. Each of them regularly received copies of posted CP emails, which were presumably reliably stored onto their computers' hard drives, possibly floppy disks, and eventually possibly backup tapes. Those hard drives were occasionally retired, but when that happened many of them were probably put on shelves to gather dust. Remember, at the moment they were retired, they were not considered totally worthless. And shelves are remarkable things: If you put something on them, perhaps in a box, that object generally does not simply disappear after years or even decades. So there was no immediate reason to throw those hard drives away, even if the potential value of that hardware gradually dropped. So, in many cases, it can be expected that such hardware remains and is ultimately retrievable, (Only idiots like Razer think otherwise, apparently.) Does anybody believe that EACH AND EVERY copy of ANY specific CP email was totally erased, everywhere around the world it happened to be. Including, for instance, the NSA and other government TLA's? How foolish! But what you need to do, immediately, is to worry about a far more omnous reality, one that I have discovered within the last 3+ days. I was a heavy participant in the Cypherpunks list from perhaps March 1995 onwards, and for a couple of years. And, quite unlike most of the now-current subscribers, the large majority of whom were not on the CP list in 1995, I can actually REMEMBER the general events of that time frame. Which is one of the main reasons I have a powerful advantage as I studied a specific kind of message and text that is, or at least SHOULD BE, in the Cypherpunks archive for 1995. You, sorting through a veritable ocean of look-sorta-alike data, are very unlikely to spontaneously notice what data happens to be "missing". If you go into a forest, how can you notice one missing tree, or a dozen? (Yes, a sawed-off stump remains an excellent clue.) I, however, knowing that my name (jim bell) and my old email adddress (jimbell(a)pacifier.com) and references to 'assassination politics' and 'AP' should be heavily present, have a huge advantage. If they aren't (still) there, I will notice it. And they aren't. And I did. You presumably don't notice it, at least not until I explain what should be present, yet isn't present. Quite understandable. But now you know. I suggest that you read my comments for the last 3 or so days on CP. In some of them, I point out that the text string 'jim bell' does not seem to be present in the 1995 archive you are maintaining, nor in the Venona file for that year. And the text string 'AP', in the limited meaning of the name of my 1995 essay, "Assassination Politics", which soon enough the vast majority of the time was shortened to merely 'AP'. Yet, I first entered the CP list about March 1995, and was solidly responding to dozens, of messages, per day. And other people, many dozens of them, were posting similar, and responding, messages back to me, and to others on the list. None of that seems to be present, at least not before November 2005, and yet it is solidly present in 2006. And yet, mysteriously, references to me and my then-email address, jimbell(a)pacifier.com simply don't occur until November 1995. But if you compare the 1996 archive, and the Venona-file equivalent, you will see that these text strings are subsequently heavily present that later year, 1996, as in fact they should also have been for more than the last half of the year 1995. And in fact, there should be far more references to "AP", per day in mid-late 1995, than eventually would be (and, I presume, still are) found in 1996. (only clueless, malicious people like Razer don't comprehend this, or at least they pretend not to be able to figure it out.) Since you are sympathetic to the Cypherpunks cause (why else would you be here?), I can tell you that there is some very good news, There is no reason to believe, now that I have discovered a major problem with the tampering, that it will be impossible to re-acquire most if not all of the emails making up what should be the archive. But the not-quite-so-good-news is that perhaps you ought to mentally re-orient yourself, shift gears a little. Yes, I agree that making and maintaining an accurate Cypherpunks archive it good and important. But you don't mow the grass when your house is on fire, do you? I say we have an 'emergency', since I have discovered massive and deliberate tampering with the CP archive. Because of your motivation to maintain an accurate list, I think you should also be motivated to figure out who managed to engineer such an abhorrent fraud, And you will notice that these tasks heavily overlap. To generate an accurate archive now requires determining what material has been omitted. And that is a difficult task: Prior to this, I suppose you thought you were dealing only with accidental, inadvertent data omissions. Now, you are aware that that there is at least one huge, deliberate, malicious fraud. And just because I noticed (so far) one of them, doesn't mean that there are not others, ones that I haven't yet noticed. Clearly, the fact that this fraud wasn't discovered until 3 days ago means that the "tools", and "system" that we should otherwise expect will find this sort of thing didn't actually work. So, if they are not changed, there is no reason to believe they will begin to work in the future. You were aware of some omissions, you just didn't understand what they were and how they were caused: "I have an uneasy feeling that many of the posts from this era may already be irrecoverably lost. If this is true it would be a great shame for future generations who want to learn about this vital period of internet history and development." Also, you should be aware that deliberately tampering with computer data is a Federal felony. https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/criminal-ccips/legacy/2015/01/1… The people who accomplished this forgery are in grave danger of prosecution, or at least they should be if the government prosecutors do their job. And part of OUR task will be to expose AND publicize this corruption sufficiently well so as to help guarantee that the Feds don't have any alternative to prosecute them. Do you think you can do that? And that includes finding out the nature of the forgery, in at least enough detail to allow a prosecutor to bring a winning case. Are you getting excited now, Mr. Busby? It's only going to get more "real" from here on in. "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vEEh0GF_C8 Jim Bell

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TED Talks: Cryptographers, quantum computers and the war for information
by jim bell 13 Nov '19

13 Nov '19

TED Talks: Cryptographers, quantum computers and the war for information. https://www.ted.com/talks/craig_costello_cryptographers_quantum_computers_a…

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Tech Xplore: Researchers discover vulnerabilities affecting billions of computer chips
by jim bell 13 Nov '19

13 Nov '19

Tech Xplore: Researchers discover vulnerabilities affecting billions of computer chips. https://techxplore.com/news/2019-11-vulnerabilities-affecting-billions-chip…

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Common Networks bets 5G will replace cable internet in your home
by jim bell 13 Nov '19

13 Nov '19

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/12/common-networks-bets-5g-will-replace-cable-…

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Facebook is deleting the name of the potential whistleblower
by jim bell 13 Nov '19

13 Nov '19

https://apnews.com/ad8f2a9b6e424138afcc97fcf2eb29bf I wonder what they mean by "deleting the name"? Do they mean deleting any posting or comment containing the name 'Eric Ciaramella'? Or just that name? Or any posting that says that "Eric Ciaramella is the whistleblower"? This sure sounds like Facebook is adopting the policies of Red China, "The Great Firewall of China". I've got a solution to that problem: The people who work for Facebook are identifiable, and mortal. Notice that the news source this story came from is "apnews". How appropriate. Jim Bell

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Ayn Rand... A 3rd Rate Writer Desired By Disturbed Sexually Frustrated Young Men
by Razer 13 Nov '19

13 Nov '19

"It's not rape if you like it..." "When Donald Trump was running for the GOP nomination, he told USA Today’s Kirsten Powers that Ayn Rand’s raped-girl-decides-she-likes-it novel, "The Fountainhead," was his favorite book." [...] "Welfare and other social safety net programs were, as Rand saw it, “the glorification of mediocrity” in society. Providing a social safety net for the poor, disabled, or unemployed, she believed, were part of a way of thinking that promoted, “satisfaction instead of joy, contentment instead of happiness… a glow-worm instead of a fire.” She, like Trump, lived a largely joyless life. She mercilessly manipulated people, particularly her husband, and, like Trump, surrounded herself with cult-like followers who were only on the inside so long as they gave her total, unhesitating loyalty. Like Trump and his billionaire backers, she believed that a government promoting working-class “looters” instead of solely looking out for capitalist “producers” was throwing its “best people” under the bus. In Rand’s universe, the producers had no obligations to the looters. Providing welfare or sacrificing one nickel of your own money to help a “looter” on welfare, unemployment, or Social Security—particularly if it was “taken at the barrel of a gun” (taxes)—was morally reprehensible. Like Trump saying, “My whole life I’ve been greedy,” for Rand looking out for numero uno was the singular name of the game—selfishness is next to godliness. Later in Rand’s life, in 1959, as she gained more notoriety for the moral philosophy of selfishness that she named “Objectivism” and that is today at the core of libertarianism..." https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/08/13/right-wing-american-love-affa… Rand died in poverty and on welfare. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Most libertards will too. I'll PISS ON YOUR POTTERS FIELD HOLE-IN-THE-GROUND UNTIL I RUN OUT OF PISS! Rr Sent from my Androgyne dee-vice with K-9 Mail

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Public police misconduct leads to public condemnation
by Ryan Carboni 13 Nov '19

13 Nov '19

Public police misconduct leads to public condemnation. By the usual suspects, you know the ACLU, Amnesty International, etc. The major liberal press.

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Some people have unbelievable lives
by Ryan Carboni 13 Nov '19

13 Nov '19

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43799281 A man suspected of masterminding the theft of 600 computers that were being used to mine virtual currencies has escaped custody in Iceland, police say. ... The computers were stolen during four raids on data centres around Iceland, a popular location for such centres because almost 100% of the power generated in Iceland comes from renewable sources and because of the cool climate. ... Prime minister on same flight https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/04/business/iceland-bitcoin-heist.html Once in Stockholm, he traveled via train, taxi and ferry to Germany through Denmark. There he met “individuals” who drove him to Amsterdam. He enjoyed just three hours of freedom in the Dutch capital. Unbeknown to him, the local authorities had been quickly tipped off by two pedestrians with a cellphone photograph of a person they believed was the much-publicized wanted man. Soon after, an officer approached Mr. Stefansson and demanded identification. Moving on to a different character This guy has two prison escapes: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45729071 Rédoine Faïd: French helicopter jailbreak gangster captured In 2013, he escaped from a prison near Lille, using explosives to blast his way through five prison doors while holding guards hostage as human shields. ... Interpol stated that he had been trying to obtain forged documents to reach Israel. Someone who escaped a French prison by helicopter three times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_Payet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Novel Gordon Michael Dwayne Novel was a private investigator and electronics expert, who was known for several controversial investigations. He was most notable for his conflict with District Attorney Jim Garrison and his work as investigator for automobile industry executive John DeLorean and U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark. ... Gus Russo has written about the existence of a letter of marque, signed by Robert F. Kennedy, who was U.S. Attorney General at the time, which supposedly gave Banister the go-ahead to "liberate" the weaponry. I'm under the impression that these unbelievable lives are the product of faulty systems, somehow. Mysterious forces indeed. But it is possible to hire anybody, convince them of anything, and set things in motion on that basis. One of the advantages of due process is that the smartest people who operate the system can evaluate if their participation is worth it.

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Border Device Searches Unconstitutional US District Court
by grarpamp 13 Nov '19

13 Nov '19

https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/federal-court-rules-suspicionless-searc… https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/alasaad_opinion_sum… In positive news... yet unfortunately perhaps only that district. 48 pages of fun... US citizens, fake court denies them data expungement and injunction, defendants spin arguments, etc. BOSTON — In a major victory for privacy rights, a federal court in Boston today ruled that the government’s suspicionless searches of international travelers’ smartphones and laptops at airports and other U.S. ports of entry violate the Fourth Amendment. The ruling came in a lawsuit, Alasaad v. McAleenan, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and ACLU of Massachusetts, on behalf of 11 travelers whose smartphones and laptops were searched without individualized suspicion at U.S. ports of entry.

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Forbes: Windows 10 Security Alert: Hidden Backdoor Found By Kaspersky Researchers
by jim bell 13 Nov '19

13 Nov '19

Forbes: Windows 10 Security Alert: Hidden Backdoor Found By Kaspersky Researchers. https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/11/12/windows-10-security-ale…

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