June 2021 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Cryptocurrency: CBDC's WarOnCash and Govt Debt's WarOnYou
by grarpamp 03 Jun '21

03 Jun '21

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/government-debt-in-2021/ https://howmuch.net/articles/state-of-the-worlds-government-debt-2021 https://www.visualcapitalist.com/americas-debt-27-trillion-and-counting/ https://www.ft.com/content/0080a5ed-4717-4ba3-9415-111b6fc82dcf EU Launches "Digital Wallet" In Latest Step Toward 'Cashless Society' Despite the concerns about digital privacy being invaded by the "vaccine passports" that Europe has demanded of travelers, the EU is pressing ahead with plans to launch a "digital wallet" that would carry digital copies of a drivers' license and credit cards (sort of like Apple Pay does) as Europe continues its transition away from cash. According to the FT, the EU is preparing to unveil its plans for the bloc-wide "digital wallet" on Wednesday. The product is the result of what Brussels described as several states' demands for the EU to create a digital tool to access important records and other products and services via the smartphone. The EU's Thierry Breton A digital wallet could store payment details and passwords, and allow citizens from all 27 countries to log into local government websites or pay utility bills or perhaps even merchants using a single recognized identity. Like with other smartphone apps, the digital wallets will be accessed via fingerprint and/or retina scanning. It can also serve as a vault where users can store official documents such as a driver’s license. Using the wallet will not be compulsory, but EU citizens who chose to sign up would benefit from an extra-secure digital ecosystem and greater flexibility ideal for post-pandemic life. "The new digital ID will give every European the keys to their digital twin," Thierry Breton, and EU commissioner in charge of digital policy, said in a speech earlier this year. EU officials plan to make it illegal for companies to use any data gleaned from these 'digital passports' for marketing or any other commercial purpose, the FT said. Brussels is engaged in discussions with member states to provide guidelines on technical standards for the rollout of the digital wallet, which is expected to be fully operational in about a year. But here's the bottom line: The EU digital wallet is "simple, secure and it will protect people online”, said a person with direct knowledge of the plans. "People will also have the power to decide how much information they give out while Google and others don’t let you decide what you’re giving away." So far, the program has seen limited interest, with only 19 member states moving to introduce the digital wallets to their citizens, and unfortunately not all of them are cross-compatible. But regulators hope that the rise in "digital literacy" driven by the pandemic will help make the "digital wallet" more popular. After all: who wants to keep carrying around all those annoying ID and credit cards? What if, instead of carrying a wallet and a phone, we just carried a phone? Fight back. https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentar… Cash may well become a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic... As these COVID-19 lockdowns drag out, more and more individuals and businesses are going cashless (for convenience and in a so-called effort to avoid spreading coronavirus germs), engaging in online commerce or using digital forms of currency (bank cards, digital wallets, etc.). As a result, physical cash is no longer king. Yet there are other, more devious, reasons for this re-engineering of society away from physical cash: a cashless society—easily monitored, controlled, manipulated, weaponized and locked down—would play right into the hands of the government (and its corporate partners). To this end, the government and its corporate partners-in-crime have been waging a subtle war on cash for some time now. What is this war on cash? It’s a concerted campaign to shift consumers towards a digital mode of commerce that can easily be monitored, tracked, tabulated, mined for data, hacked, hijacked and confiscated when convenient. According to economist Steve Forbes, “The real reason for this war on cash - start with the big bills and then work your way down - is an ugly power grab by Big Government. People will have less privacy: Electronic commerce makes it easier for Big Brother to see what we’re doing, thereby making it simpler to bar activities it doesn’t like, such as purchasing salt, sugar, big bottles of soda and Big Macs.” Much like the war on drugs and the war on terror, this so-called “war on cash” is being sold to the public as a means of fighting terrorists, drug dealers, tax evaders and now COVID-19 germs. Digital currency provides the government and its corporate partners with the ultimate method to track, control you and punish you. In much the same way that Americans have opted into government surveillance through the convenience of GPS devices and cell phones, digital cash—the means of paying with one’s debit card, credit card or cell phone—is becoming the de facto commerce of the American police state. Not too long ago, it was estimated that smart phones would replace cash and credit cards altogether by 2020. Right on schedule, a growing number of businesses are adopting no-cash policies, including certain airlines, hotels, rental car companies, restaurants and retail stores. In Sweden, even the homeless and churches accept digital cash. Making the case for “never, ever carrying cash” in lieu of a digital wallet, journalist Lisa Rabasca Roepe argues that cash is inconvenient, ATM access is costly, and it’s now possible to reimburse people using digital apps such as Venmo. Thus, there’s no longer a need for cash. “More and more retailers and grocery stores are embracing Apple Pay, Google Wallet, Samsung Pay, and Android Pay,” notes Roepe. “PayPal's app is now accepted at many chain stores including Barnes & Noble, Foot Locker, Home Depot, and Office Depot. Walmart and CVS have both developed their own payment apps while their competitors Target and RiteAid are working on their own apps.” So what’s the deal here? Despite all of the advantages that go along with living in a digital age—namely, convenience—it’s hard to imagine how a cashless world navigated by way of a digital wallet doesn’t signal the beginning of the end for what little privacy we have left and leave us vulnerable to the likes of government thieves and data hackers. First, when I say privacy, I’m not just referring to the things that you don’t want people to know about, those little things you do behind closed doors that are neither illegal nor harmful but embarrassing or intimate. I am also referring to the things that are deeply personal and which no one need know about, certainly not the government and its constabulary of busybodies, nannies, Peeping Toms, jail wardens and petty bureaucrats. Second, we’re already witnessing how easy it will be for government agents to manipulate digital wallets for their own gain. For example, civil asset forfeiture schemes are becoming even more profitable for police agencies thanks to ERAD (Electronic Recovery and Access to Data) devices supplied by the Department of Homeland Security that allow police to not only determine the balance of any magnetic-stripe card (i.e., debit, credit and gift cards) but also freeze and seize any funds on pre-paid money cards. In fact, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that it does not violate the Fourth Amendment for police to scan or swipe your credit card. Third, the war on cash is about giving the government the ultimate control of the economy and complete access to the citizenry’s pocketbook. Fourth, every technological convenience that has made our lives easier has also become our Achilles’ heel, opening us up to greater vulnerabilities from hackers and government agents alike. Fifth, if there’s one entity that will not stop using cash for its own nefarious purposes, it’s the U.S. government. Cash is the currency used by the government to pay off its foreign “associates.” Sixth, this drive to do away with cash is part of a larger global trend driven by international financial institutions and the United Nations that is transforming nations of all sizes, from the smallest nation to the biggest, most advanced economies. Finally, short of returning to a pre-technological, Luddite age, there’s really no way to pull this horse back now that it’s left the gate. While doing so is near impossible, it would also mean doing without the many conveniences and advantages that are the better angels, if you will, of technology’s totalitarian tendencies: the internet, medical advances, etc. To our detriment, we have virtually no control over who accesses our private information, how it is stored, or how it is used. Whether we ever had much control remains up for debate. However, in terms of our bargaining power over digital privacy rights, we have been reduced to a pitiful, unenviable position in which we can only hope and trust that those in power will treat our information with respect. Fight back.

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[ot] [wrong] [fiction] Gifts
by Karl 02 Jun '21

02 Jun '21

Sad friend receives an anonymous delivery. It is the severed head of somebody they knew. Next to the head is a message written in blood: "I do not want a hug." Friend is so sad! Picks up severed head, goes to police station. Delivers head to police officer with explanation and the message, "I'm only trying to support you. I don't need a hug if you don't want one. Can you hear that I want to give you what you need?" Returns to home to find it burned down. The ashes of all their belongings have been spread in another message: "You have no idea what it's like to be me." Friend had stored all their surveillance footage on a blockchain, reviews the blockchain and finds home was burned by people with similar gaits and frames to five others in their community. Visits one of these people to make friends with them, too. ...

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Ars Technica: Amazon devices will soon automatically share your Internet with neighbors
by jim bell 02 Jun '21

02 Jun '21

Ars Technica: Amazon devices will soon automatically share your Internet with neighbors. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/amazon-devices-will-soon-automatica… Jim Bell's comment:I've long believed that something like this could be good...if it is "done right" Unfortunately, I cannot tell what "done right" entails.

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Hackaday: Satellite Communications Hack Chat
by jim bell 02 Jun '21

02 Jun '21

Hackaday: Satellite Communications Hack Chat. https://hackaday.com/2021/06/01/satellite-communications-hack-chat/

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[ot] [wrong] personal project probstats notes
by Karl 01 Jun '21

01 Jun '21

Noting that the input data to my histogram block is not necessarily a population, it may just be sampled from one. In that case the expression I wrote earlier is not strictly true. When you sample from something, the distribution described by the different samplings is normal. So the probability of the true population measure being any particular thing, is the same as the probability of a normal distribution having a particular mean, given one of its values and it's standard deviation. Finding that answer means knowing the distribution of possible probability distributions, without regard to the sample. I think if we assume a uniform distribution of actual histograms possible in all reality, then the distribution of values of a single bin would be a function of that uniform distribution of histograms, and which bin it is ... that's not quite uniform, as the number of options the rest of a histogram has changes depending on the density used by a bin, but it's probably some drivable algebraic expression. Simulating is always good to test things.

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agent grarpamp 'predicts' the poronga virus PSYOP
by Punk-BatSoup-Stasi 2.0 01 Jun '21

01 Jun '21

https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/2018-October/073195.html me: I originally was wondering about the NEXT false flag attack or inside job grarpamp: A good one would be a redux of the Anthrax mail game, but this time say some deadly bio agent in the water supply killing 10k+ from drinking but without transmitting further. Folks at US Fort Detrick and RU VECTOR certainly have that tech on standby, and the meme has been available to independants for a couple decades now. ------------ And then we have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Detrick "In August 2019, its deadly germ research operations were abruptly shutdown following serious safety violation" In reality, and contrary to grarpamps current bullshit-pentagon-propaganda regarding china, the false flag attack is purely 'psychological'. Still, it's quite telling that a pretty dubious character like grarpamp made a correct guess in 2018 and now switched to parroting pentagon propaganda for right wing trash(like him).

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TechRadar: Exclusive: Seagate 'exploring' possible new line of crypto-specific hard drives
by jim bell 01 Jun '21

01 Jun '21

TechRadar: Exclusive: Seagate 'exploring' possible new line of crypto-specific hard drives. https://www.techradar.com/news/exclusive-seagate-exploring-possible-new-lin…

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The Gentleperson's Guide To Forum Spies (spooks, feds, etc.)
by Greg Newby 01 Jun '21

01 Jun '21

John, On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 07:30:06PM -0400, John Young wrote: > Greg, these complaints seem to fit the disruptive practices of attackers described here: > > https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm > > Maybe coincidental but not the first to aim at messing with the list. Other lists have been wiped out with endless bitches, accusations, demand for attention. Of possible interest, here is an extract from a WWII-era field manual on sabotage. It highlights a variety of mechanisms to monkey-wrench organizations: Techniques for General Interference with Organizations and Production. Extracted from Project Gutenberg's eBook #26184 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26184) SIMPLE SABOTAGE FIELD MANUAL STRATEGIC SERVICES FIELD MANUAL No. 3 (11) General Interference with Organizations and Production (a) Organizations and Conferences (1) Insist on doing everything through "channels." Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions. (2) Make "speeches." Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your "points" by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate "patriotic" comments. (3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study and consideration." Attempt to make the committees as large as possible -- never less than five. (4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible. (5) Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions. (6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision. (7) Advocate "caution." Be "reasonable" and urge your fellow-conferees to be "reasonable" and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on. (8) Be worried about the propriety of any decision -- raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon. (b) Managers and Supervisors (1) Demand written orders. (2) "Misunderstand" orders. Ask endless questions or engage in long correspondence about such orders. Quibble over them when you can. (3) Do everything possible to delay the delivery of orders. Even though parts of an order may be ready beforehand, don't deliver it until it is completely ready. (4) Don't order new working materials until your current stocks have been virtually exhausted, so that the slightest delay in filling your order will mean a shutdown. (5) Order high-quality materials which are hard to get. If you don't get them argue about it. Warn that inferior materials will mean inferior work. (6) In making work assignments, always sign out the unimportant jobs first. See that the important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers of poor machines. (7) Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products; send back for refinishing those which have the least flaw. Approve other defective parts whose flaws are not visible to the naked eye. (8) Make mistakes in routing so that parts and materials will be sent to the wrong place in the plant. (9) When training new workers, give incomplete or misleading instructions. (10) To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work. (11) Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done. (12) Multiply paper work in plausible ways. Start duplicate files. (13) Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions, pay checks, and so on. See that three people have to approve everything where one would do. (14) Apply all regulations to the last letter. (c) Office Workers (1) Make mistakes in quantities of material when you are copying orders. Confuse similar names. Use wrong addresses. (2) Prolong correspondence with government bureaus. (3) Misfile essential documents. (4) In making carbon copies, make one too few, so that an extra copying job will have to be done. (5) Tell important callers the boss is busy or talking on another telephone. (6) Hold up mail until the next collection. (7) Spread disturbing rumors that sound like inside dope. (d) Employees (1) Work slowly. Think out ways to increase the number of movements necessary on your job: use a light hammer instead of a heavy one, try to make a small wrench do when a big one is necessary, use little force where considerable force is needed, and so on. (2) Contrive as many interruptions to your work as you can: when changing the material on which you are working, as you would on a lathe or punch, take needless time to do it. If you are cutting, shaping or doing other measured work, measure dimensions twice as often as you need to. When you go to the lavatory, spend a longer time there than is necessary. Forget tools so that you will have to go back after them. (3) Even if you understand the language, pretend not to understand instructions in a foreign tongue. (4) Pretend that instructions are hard to understand, and ask to have them repeated more than once. Or pretend that you are particularly anxious to do your work, and pester the foreman with unnecessary questions. (5) Do your work poorly and blame it on bad tools, machinery, or equipment. Complain that these things are preventing you from doing your job right. (6) Never pass on your skill and experience to a new or less skillful worker. (7) Snarl up administration in every possible way. Fill out forms illegibly so that they will have to be done over; make mistakes or omit requested information in forms. (8) If possible, join or help organize a group for presenting employee problems to the management. See that the procedures adopted are as inconvenient as possible for the management, involving the presence of a large number of employees at each presentation, entailing more than one meeting for each grievance, bringing up problems which are largely imaginary, and so on. (9) Misroute materials. (10) Mix good parts with unusable scrap and rejected parts. (12) General Devices for Lowering Morale and Creating Confusion (a) Give lengthy and incomprehensible explanations when questioned. (b) Report imaginary spies or danger to the Gestapo or police. (c) Act stupid. (d) Be as irritable and quarrelsome as possible without getting yourself into trouble. (e) Misunderstand all sorts of regulations concerning such matters as rationing, transportation, traffic regulations. (f) Complain against ersatz materials. (g) In public treat axis nationals or quislings coldly. (h) Stop all conversation when axis nationals or quislings enter a caf�. (i) Cry and sob hysterically at every occasion, especially when confronted by government clerks. (j) Boycott all movies, entertainments, concerts, newspapers which are in any way connected with the quisling authorities. (k) Do not cooperate in salvage schemes.

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[ot] [gmail] [log] [wrong] was Re: agent grarpamp 'predicts' the poronga virus PSYOP
by Karl 01 Jun '21

01 Jun '21

My personal experience is of just hitting "reply" on my phone. Sometimes the emails come from gmkarl, sometimes from 0xloem. I think i'm actually subscribed to the list under both emails. But I'm using my gmkarl account. I have gmail configured to reply with the address the email was sent to (it puts the account address in a header when it does this). I guess gmail must be picking using some implementation quirk, whether to reply as gmkarl or xloem, to emails sent to one or the other. I try to pick gmkarl instead of xloem when I remember on this list, so I can try to act less crazy when speaking as xloem, which is one of the email I addresses that i have more software development history as.

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Population estimates from samples
by Greg Newby 01 Jun '21

01 Jun '21

Karl had been asking about how to estimate population statistics from a sample. I came across a fascinating approach to this, called bootstrapping or the bootstrap method. I learned about this an EdX data science course offered by Berkeley. The method is described in the course's free online textbook: https://inferentialthinking.com/chapters/13/2/Bootstrap.html This method makes some assumptions, including that your sample is reasonably large, and that the population distribution is approximately normal. The basic approach is to take your sample, and then randomly re-sample from the sample. This lets you build up a probability distribution of samples which, in turn, is representative of the population. The text includes some worked examples. The course uses Python (Jupyter notebooks) and a computational framework based on Pandas. The course sequence: https://www.edx.org/professional-certificate/berkeleyx-foundations-of-data-… It's the second course, "Inferential thinking through simulations," which introduces and builds on the bootstrap concept. Lots of the materials are free - including the computational framework and examples. I'm not sure whether you can audit the (self-paced) course for free. I found the bootstrap method to be very interesting. It is not something that came up in my many grad and undergrad statistics courses or other research methods (maybe it emerged since I was a university student). I hope this helps. Greg

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