June 2021 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Cryptocurrency: Jefferson vs Central Banks
by grarpamp 28 Dec '21

28 Dec '21

https://schiffgold.com/commentaries/thomas-jefferson-vs-the-federal-reserve/ https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bank-tj.asp https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-3562 The Federal Reserve is the engine that drives one of the biggest, most powerful governments in the history of the world. Without the Fed, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for the government to fund its foreign wars, its massive, unsustainable social programs, the ever-growing police state, and the tangled web of corporate welfare programs. It’s almost certain none of this would exist as we know it today – not even close. The federal government would truly be limited. Although the Federal Reserve is relatively new within the scope of American history, its roots go back to the early days of the republic and the First Bank of the United States, chartered by Congress on Feb. 25, 1791. A national bank was the brainchild of Alexander Hamilton. His rationale wasn’t much different from those who later came up with the Federal Reserve. Hamilton thought a central bank was necessary to stabilize and improve the fledgling nation’s credit and to better manage the financial business of the United States government. The notion of a national bank but wasn’t without its detractors. One of the most vocal opponents of the bank was Thomas Jefferson who argued that it was unconstitutional. The debate was really about more than chartering a bank. At its core, it was an argument about the extent of federal power. Jefferson held to the promise of the ratification debates – that federal authority would remain carefully circumscribed by the enumerated delegated powers. Given that the Constitution doesn’t authorize Congress to charter corporations, much less a national bank, Jefferson argued that it was an unconstitutional act. On the other hand, Hamilton pivoted from the position he took during the ratification debates and justified his project by invoking the doctrine of “implied powers.” His arguments foreshadowed how federal policies of every imaginable stripe would be justified moving forward. Arguably, Hamilton’s arguments for the First Bank of the United States set the foundation for much of the federal overreach we have today. Jefferson and Hamilton both wrote documents making their cases for the establishment of the bank. Jefferson wrote his Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank first. He rested his argument on the Tenth Amendment, writing: “I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.’ [XIIth amendment.] To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.” He then succinctly stated his conclusion. “The incorporation of a bank, and the powers assumed by this bill, have not, in my opinion, been delegated to the United States, by the Constitution.” Jefferson proceeded to outline the various clauses of the Constitution supporters of the bank used to constitutionally justify and explained why they failed to bear the burden of that power. The primary justification was the Commerce Clause, but Jefferson argued that “to erect a bank, and to regulate commerce, are very different acts.” Erecting a bank actually creates an institution of commerce, and as Jefferson pointed out, “to make a thing which may be bought and sold, is not to prescribe regulations for buying and selling.” He went on to argue that if erecting a bank is an exercise of the commerce power, it would be void because it would also impact commerce within individual states. “For the power given to Congress by the Constitution does not extend to the internal regulation of the commerce of a State, (that is to say of the commerce between citizen and citizen,) which remain exclusively with its own legislature; but to its external commerce only, that is to say, its commerce with another State, or with foreign nations, or with the Indian tribes.” Next Jefferson tackled the General Welfare Clause, pointing out that Congress cannot lay and collect taxes for any purpose it pleases, “but only to pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the Union.” Likewise, Congress can’t do anything it pleases to promote the “general welfare.” It can only further the general welfare by laying taxes and acting within its enumerated powers. “In like manner, they are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase, not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please, which might be for the good of the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and, as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. It is an established rule of construction where a phrase will bear either of two meanings, to give it that which will allow some meaning to the other parts of the instrument, and not that which would render all the others useless. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lacce them up straitly within the enumerated powers, and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect.” [Emphasis original] Jefferson drove his point home by pointing out a very inconvenient fact for Hamilton – the Philadelphia Convention debated and rejected delegating the power to charter corporations. On one of the final days of the convention, James Madison proposed the federal government be delegated the authority “to grant charters of incorporation where the interest of the U.S. might require & the legislative provisions of individual State may be incompetent.” Rufus King of Massachusetts objected specifically on the grounds that “It will be referred to the establishment of a Bank, which has been a subject of contention in those Cities (New York and Philadelphia). He also warned that “In other places it will be referred to mercantile monopolies.” George Mason of Virginia proposed limiting the power to charting corporations for the construction of canals. “He was afraid of monopolies of every sort, which he did not think were by any means already implied by the Constitution as supposed by Mr. Wilson.” Ultimately, the convention rejected the proposal completely. Historian Dave Benner wrote, “This casts overwhelming doubt on the notion that the Constitution allowed Congress to form such monopolies. No enumerated power to grant monopolies and corporate charters was ever included in the document, and during the ratification campaign, none of the Constitution’s advocates cited the presence of such a power.” But Hamilton’s arguments didn’t rely on the existence of any delegated power. Instead, he appealed to the existence of unwritten “implied powers.” In response to Jefferson’s appeal to the Tenth Amendment and that the federal government can only exercise delegated powers, Hamilton affirmed it, and then effectively nullified its limiting force. He wrote, “The main proposition here laid down, in its true signification is not to be questioned.” But he continued, insisting, “It is not denied that there are implied well as express powers, and that the former are as effectually delegated as the latter.” But who decides the extent of these implied powers? Who determines their limits? In effect, Hamilton sets up an almost unlimited reservoir of power the general government can dip into in order to take whatever actions it deems appropriate. This was a 180-degree reversal from the position he took during the ratification debates when he insisted that the new general government would only exercise limited powers. Hamilton primarily based his defense of the national bank on the “necessary and proper clause,” citing it as the source of these “implied” powers. While Jefferson relied on a very narrow definition of “necessary and proper,” Hamilton used the phrase to milk implied powers out of the Constitution. The debate centered on the meaning of the word necessary. Jefferson took a very narrow view, arguing that the government can carry out all of its enumerated powers without a national bank. “A bank therefore is not necessary, and consequently not authorized by this phrase.” “It has been urged that a bank will give great facility or convenience in the collection of taxes, Suppose this were true: yet the Constitution allows only the means which are ‘necessary,’ not those which are merely ‘convenient’ for effecting the enumerated powers. If such a latitude of construction be allowed to this phrase as to give any non-enumerated power, it will go to everyone, for there is not one which ingenuity may not torture into a convenience in some instance or other, to some one of so long a list of enumerated powers. It would swallow up all the delegated powers, and reduce the whole to one power, as before observed. Therefore it was that the Constitution restrained them to the necessary means, that is to say, to those means without which the grant of power would be nugatory.” Hamilton found this view too limiting. He wrote, “It is certain that neither the grammatical nor popular sense of the term requires that construction. According to both, necessary often means no more than needful, requisite, incidental, useful, or conducive to.” “It is a common mode of expression to say, that it is necessary for a government or a person to do this or that thing, when nothing more is intended or understood, than that the interests of the government or person require, or will be promoted by, the doing of this or that thing. … To understand the word as the Secretary of State does, would be to depart from its obvious and popular sense, and to give it a restrictive operation, an idea never before entertained. It would be to give it the same force as if the word absolutely or indispensably had been prefixed to it.” Jefferson hit the problem with Hamilton’s view on the head. It opens up a door to virtually unlimited government power. This runs counter to James Madison’s assurance in Federalist #45 that “the powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined.” [Emphasis added] Under Hamilton’s “implied power” doctrine and his loose reading of the necessary and proper clause, there is very little the federal government can’t do. After all, virtually anything could be defined as “needful” or “useful” to the government. During the ratification debates, opponents of the Constitution worried that the necessary and proper clause would be construed exactly as Hamilton read it. At the time, Hamilton swore they had nothing to worry about. In Federalist #33, he wrote, “It may be affirmed with perfect confidence that the constitutional operation of the intended government would be precisely the same, if these clauses [necessary and proper and the supremacy clause] were entirely obliterated, as if they were repeated in every article. They are only declaratory of a truth which would have resulted by necessary and unavoidable implication from the very act of constituting a federal government, and vesting it with certain specified powers.” [Emphasis added] Hamilton pivoted from “specified powers” in 1788 to “implied powers” just three years later. In his push for a bank, Hamilton also invoked a rule of construction very favorable to the government. He wrote, “This restrictive interpretation of the word necessary is also contrary to this sound maxim of construction, namely, that the powers contained in a constitution of government, especially those which concern the general administration of the affairs of a country, its finances, trade, defense, etc., ought to be construed liberally in advancement of the public good.” This was not “a sound maxim of construction” at the time. St. George Tucker was an influential lawyer and jurist, and he wrote the first systematic commentary on the Constitution. Published in 1803, View of the Constitution of the United States served as an important law book, informing the opinions of judges, lawyers and politicians for the next 50 years. He explained that we should always construe federal power in the most limited sense possible. “The powers delegated to the federal government, are, in all cases, to receive the most strict construction that the instrument will bear, where the rights of a state or of the people, either collectively or individually, may be drawn in question.” This is the exact opposite of Hamilton’s maxim. As “Light Horse” Harry Lee put it during the Virginia ratifying convention, “When a question arises with respect to the legality of any power, exercised or assumed by Congress, it is plain on the side of the governed. Is it enumerated in the Constitution? If it be, it is legal and just. It is otherwise arbitrary and unconstitutional.” When political power resides in the people, the default position should always be to assume the most limited government power possible – not the most liberal reading as Hamilton insisted. Later in his life, Jefferson made a similar point in a letter to William Johnson. “On every question of construction let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or intended against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.” There was no probable construction authorizing charting a national bank. Reading Hamilton’s arguments for the bank, it becomes clear he was trying to “squeeze” meaning – and power – out of the Constitution. Under the limited general government promised by supporters of the Constitution during ratification, including Alexander Hamilton, there would have been no national bank. Hamilton’s twisting of the Constitution to wring out new powers set the stage for much the federal overreach that would follow. It was the “foundation” for the “living breathing” Constitution we live under today.

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How to isolate/figure out whispers in audio clip?
by Douglas Lucas 10 Dec '21

10 Dec '21

Hey cypherpunks, I have an .MP4 clip of Joe Biden whispering to 13-year-old Maggie Coons before trying to kiss her: https://douglaslucas.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/JoeBiden_ChrisCoon… The relevant portion of the clip begins at approx 1:05. Biden whispers: "By the way, if you want to know how important it is, being thirteen" and then I can't make out the rest, I think due to the loud camera shutter. Can anyone suggest an audio program (preferably for Linux) that can help isolate Biden's voice? Computery techniques I could use, or you could use, to help figure out what he's whispering? For reference, the event this clip is from took place on January 6, 2015, and the full video is here: https://www.c-span.org/video/?323601-1/senate-ceremonial-swearing-vice-pres… Doug

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"Hearty people only found freedom inside a testimony of structured monuments" - Chinese pidgin analysis of recent Kenosha events - [PEACE]
by Zenaan Harkness 18 Nov '21

18 Nov '21

This comes across as quite philosophical, though it's hard to parse being heavy pidgin. In any case, nice to see an attempt at a philosophical analysis: Kenosha: A Pale Cleansing or Fiddle with It to Realize? http://dstormer6em3i4km.onion/kenosha-a-pale-cleansing-or-fiddle-with-it-to…

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Tor Stinks: Stealthy Traffic Analysis
by grarpamp 26 Aug '21

26 Aug '21

Stealthy Traffic Analysis of Low-Latency Anonymous Communication Using Throughput Fingerprinting Prateek Mittal et al. ACM CCS 2011 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/2046707.2046732 https://www.cryptolux.org/images/b/bc/Tor_Issues_Thesis_Thill_Fabrice.pdf https://ohmygodel.com/publications/peerflow-popets2017.pdf

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The countries that trusted bugged Swiss encryption devices
by jim bell 13 Aug '21

13 Aug '21

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/crypto-spying-scandal_the-countries-that-trust…

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GoldBug Messenger Fraud? [was: FBI encrypted app, global arrests]
by grarpamp 13 Aug '21

13 Aug '21

> believe How GoldBug claimed EFF support, censored users, did many shady practices, never explained themselves, etc... is all in the archive. Whether people ever find, read, verify, spread, believe, or beware that history, try to resolve it, or audit the app themselves or not... is up to the user. Whether GoldBug, and the whole rest of their fishy suite, people, and actions, ever explains itself... is up to GoldBug. "GB does not provide checksums for the binary downloads as the source is given for those who want to build on their own. GB has a build date in the gui so the sums might differ." See how they still dodge around the basics that every real crypto project gets right. Referring to "checksums" as if that wasn't deprecated decades ago, claim opensource given is an excuse to not sign their binaries or sources, it's just the "build date" (which absolutely no project ever needs, and law of reproducible builds forbids) numbing people to fall for that excuse. And how no legitimate crypto comms dev people or projects on the internet seem to be using, reviewing, or citing them. Yet there's plenty of GoldBug's shill review sockpuppets, fake wiki pages, oddball software listing sites they spammed all over the internet. Etc, etc, etc... Fraud? Or best software ever? You decide. Maybe it is amazing tool, yet whatever it is, how they are acting is more than suspicious enough to hopefully impart a big amount of caution on potential users.

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Torsocks Errors
by Se7en 11 Aug '21

11 Aug '21

I am unable to torify my fetchmail anymore, because Torsocks prevents setguid programs from running, which does not interfeer with fetchmail but does interfeer with procmail. Does anyone know a solution? I am still able to send torified, but am unable to recieve torified via pop3 and I do not want to continue this behavior. -- |-----/ | Se7en / The One and Only! | se7en(a)cock.email / | 0x0F83F93882CF6116 / | https://se7en-site.neocities.org

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LibGen SciHub: Replication of Science Experiment - Seed for Success
by grarpamp 09 Jul '21

09 Jul '21

> in conformance with the Scientific Method: Successful Replication of Experiment. https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/nc27fv/rescue_mission_for_sci… https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/ndlfpp/scihub_files_current_s… http://libgen.rs/scimag/repository_torrent/ https://pastebin.com/j6ZaZe9z https://old.reddit.com/r/scihub https://old.reddit.com/r/libgen Some have been part of recent years efforts to preserve and enhance, distributed load and storage is key to keep seed the unseeded for futures... Rescue Mission for Sci-Hub and Open Science: We are the library. DataHoarder by shrine Rescue Mission Links in original Quick start to rescuing Sci-Hub: Download 1 random torrent (100GB) from the scimag collection and download it. Seed forever. Contribute to open source Sci-Hub projects: freereadorg/awesome-libgen Join /r/scihub to stay up to date A Rescue Mission for Sci-Hub and Open Science Elsevier and the USDOJ have declared war against Sci-Hub and open science. The era of Sci-Hub and Alexandra standing alone in this fight must end. We have to take a stand with her. On May 7th, Sci-Hub's Alexandra Elbakyan revealed that the FBI has been wiretapping her accounts for over 2 years. This news comes after Twitter silenced the official Sci_Hub twitter account because Indian academics were organizing on it against Elsevier. Sci-Hub itself is currently frozen and has not downloaded any new articles since December 2020. This rescue mission is focused on seeding the article collection in order to prepare for a potential Sci-Hub shutdown. Alexandra Elbakyan of Sci-Hub, bookwarrior of Library Genesis, Aaron Swartz, and countless unnamed others have fought to free science from the grips of for-profit publishers. Today, they do it working in hiding, alone, without acknowledgment, in fear of imprisonment, and even now wiretapped by the FBI. They sacrifice everything for one vision: Open Science. Why do they do it? They do it so that humble scholars on the other side of the planet can practice medicine, create science, fight for democracy, teach, and learn. People like Alexandra Elbakyan would give up their personal freedom for that one goal: to free knowledge. For that, Elsevier Corp (RELX, market cap: 50 billion) wants to silence her, wants to see her in prison, and wants to shut Sci-Hub down. It's time we sent Elsevier and the USDOJ a clearer message about the fate of Sci-Hub and open science: we are the library, we do not get silenced, we do not shut down our computers, and we are many. Rescue Mission for Sci-Hub If you have been following the story, then you know that this is not our first rescue mission. We protected the Library Genesis book collection We unlocked over 5,000 COVID-19 research articles We successfully petitioned publishers to unlock their COVID-19 paywalls bookwarrior, the founder of Library Genesis, took his library onto the de-centralized and un-censorable IPFS web Next? Make Sci-Hub un-censorable too. Rescue Target A handful of Library Genesis seeders are currently seeding the Sci-Hub torrents. There are 850 scihub torrents, each containing 100,000 scientific articles, to a total of 85 million scientific articles: 77TB. This is the complete Sci-Hub database. We need to protect this. Rescue Team Wave 1: We need 85 datahoarders to store and seed 1TB of articles each, 10 torrents in total. Download 10 random torrents from the scimag collection, then load the torrents onto your client and seed for as long as you can. The articles are coded by DOI and in zip files. Wave 2: Reach out to 10 good friends to ask them to grab just 1 random torrent (100GB). That's 850 seeders. We are now the library. Final Wave: Development for an open source Sci-Hub. freereadorg/awesome-libgen is a collection of open source achievements based on the Sci-Hub and Library Genesis databases. Open source de-centralization of Sci-Hub is the ultimate goal here, and this begins with the data, but it is going to take years of developer sweat to carry these libraries into the future. Heartfelt thanks to the /r/datahoarder and /r/seedboxes communities, seedbox.io and NFOrce for your support for previous missions and your love for science.

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[ot] [wrong] imaginary therapy/compassion
by Karl 09 Jul '21

09 Jul '21

"Tortured again for posting about being tortured on the internet. I am evil for being tortured." "You don't even believe in evil, how can you be something you don't believe exists?" "You make a hard point. You make a hard point. Have you ever been tortured?" "Honestly, it's pretty hard to talk about, and I don't know if it was anything like your torture. My children were taken by men with machine guns when I upset somebody, once, and we ended up all coming here to escape the situation." "Did they hound you and tell you it was somehow your fault, for upsetting them, that your children were in danger?" "Yes, this did happen ..."

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[ot][spam] escaping the matrix from within
by Karl 08 Jul '21

08 Jul '21

"I think this whole world might be a simulation." "I saw a movie about that. You can escape and work with a bunch of rebels to take down the computerised apocalypse." "How do you escape?" "You have to swallow a special rebel pill that makes you unplug." "What, like public key cryptography or blockchains?" "Uhh, where do I get those in pill form?"

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