- cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Earlier Detweiler ravings!!
by gwen hastings 09 Jan '14

09 Jan '14

>From ld231782 Wed Dec 29 21:33:12 1993 Return-Path: ld231782 Received: from dolores.lance.colostate.edu (dolores.lance.colostate.edu [129.82.112.18]) by longs.lance.colostate.edu (8.6.4/8.6.4) with SMTP id VAA27831; Wed, 29 Dec 1993 21:32:40 -0700 Message-Id: <199312300432.VAA27831(a)longs.lance.colostate.edu> to: cypherpunks(a)toad.com, cypherwonks(a)lists.eunet.fi, colorado_cypherpunks(a)vis.colostate.edu subject: Paranoia Strikes Deep... cc: ld231782 Date: Wed, 29 Dec 93 21:32:28 -0700 From: "L. Detweiler" <ld231782> X-Mts: smtp Hello, I have been hearing some rumors about the cypherpunks being `penetrated' by some spies and areas of the Internet (mailing lists, newsgroups, private mail, journal articles, etc.) being targeted with `tentacle' infiltrations. I thought this was kind of fascinating to contemplate how they would behave. It seems to me that loyalty is very hard to judge by mere email messages alone, and that these hypothetical spies might take that to their advantage. Here are some of the things that either cypherpunk loyalists (cyberanarchists) or cy{b,ph}erwonk spies might say to gain credibility and further `intelligence' from insiders: - L.Detweiler is insane, has sent death threats, is behind S.Boxx, is involved in cyberspatial guerrila warfare, is the mastermind of a spy plot, etc. He is the only person in the world who cares about pseudospoofing. (All the complete ad hominem fantasy stuff). - `T.C. May and E.Hughes and J.Gilmore are all outstanding and upstanding net citizens, have never pseudospoofed or done anything wrong, and are the target of an anonymous smear campaign by terrorists.' - `I have been to cypherpunk meetings and parties, and I have met all the people who have been accused of being tentacles, and they are all real. In fact, I saw their drivers licenses.' `Someone accused of being a tentacle actually lives with me.' - There are no conspiracies whatsoever going on inside the cypherpunks, including drug use by `leaders' or pseudospoofing or other illegitimate activities. - Lies are liberating. `We have a right to lie to the media and other people through tentacles.' One can make a game out of infecting respectable media outlets like Wired and NYT with elaborate deceptions. - Pseudospoofing is liberating. `You are only as good as the number of identities you can project on the internet; this is a feature, not a bug.' The Enders Game book (Orson Scott Card?) is an example of the liberating effect of pseudospoofing on freeing people from their arbitrary prejudices about human identity and accountability. - There's no big deal about black marketeering or tax evasion. Everyone does it. It's a survival tactic in a brutal world of corrupt governments and massive corporations out to oppress the little guy. We are entering a New World Order where anarchy will rule and all governments will crumble. - Blacknet is a harmless and visionary cyberspatial experiment done by T.C.May. - `Please take these annoying discussions about secret conspiracies elsewhere.' Of course, if any of these statements are by the spies, they are just trying to build up your trust so that they can betray you later when they have the proper opportunity. Or, sometimes, there is the dictum that `intelligence is more valuable than liquidation' and they may continue to deceive you just for the valuable intelligence indefinately. * * * Then there may be some `tentacles' out there that are being driven by the counterrevolutionaries bent on destroying the Cyberanarchist movement and interested in getting some of their own propaganda out there. These would be indistinguishable from cy{b,ph}erwonk loyalists. - L.Detweiler is brilliant, has made stellar net contributions, has never sent death threats, no evidence exists that he is behind S.Boxx, he has spoken out against cyberspatial guerrila warfare, is the mastermind of a new mailing list but talk of a spy plot is preposterous, etc. He is one of many in the world who cares very seriously about pseudospoofing as all his writing in e.g. RISKS and CUD attests. - `Very little is know about T.C. May and E.Hughes and J.Gilmore as far as their personalities, and in fact J.Gilmore has admitted publicly to drug use, and all vehemently resist making unequivocal public or private statements on pseudospoofing, although they do seem to be the target of an anonymous smear campaign by the anonymous person S.Boxx, but with some disturbing elements of truth.' - `I have never been to cypherpunk meetings and parties, and I am suspicious of the behavior of many of the `people' L.Detweiler has accused of being tentacles, because of the lack of verifiable information and a sort of `cardboard cutout' flavor to their personalities. There seems to be some desperate damage control going on.' - There seem to be some actual conspiracies going on inside the cypherpunks, including drug use by `leaders' or pseudospoofing or other illegitimate activities. - Lies are lies. `No one has a right to lie to the media or other people through tentacles.' Anyone who makes a game out of infecting respectable media outlets like Wired and NYT with elaborate deceptions is malicious, depraved, and perverted. - Pseudospoofing is perverted. Statements like `You are only as good as the number of identities you can project on the internet; this is a feature, not a bug.' are depraved and deluded. The Enders Game book (Orson Scott Card?) is an example of the very dangerous effect of pseudospoofing on manipulating people in their assumptions and presumptions about human identity and accountability, and for mind control and brainwashing. - Black marketeering and tax evasion are evil. Though many promote it, it is toxic to social harmony. Those that promote it are all hypocrites who claim that they have found new societies that are free of it, but have found only societies of poisonous distrust and paranoia. The whole purpose of governments and corporations is to serve people, and if they fail to do so they need to be adjusted but not destroyed. - `Please don't censor these fascinating discussions about secret conspiracies and cyberanarchists.' * * * It's quite a pity that in Cyberspace, to borrow a phrase that is rapidly becoming a cliche, no one knows if you are a spy. Perhaps we can work together to build systems that minimize this kind of rampant paranoia. It's really a shame that someone with a grudge against any mailing list or its leaders could so disrupt its smooth flowing operation with no repercussions. I have some ideas for preventing this, and in fact I encourage anyone else who does to join the Cy{ph,b}erwonks list and discuss these issues associated with Electronic Democracy. ``The first casualty in war is the truth.'' There is a saying in war, `shoot them all and let God sort them out.' Perhaps in these turbulent times, this message represents a `list all the rumors and let the People sort them out.' I hope the truth prevails in Cyberspace as it does in the real world. Our own controversies, such as those above, will serve as an interesting experiment. -- Tentacle #99 ecc public key curve p160 ;9C~b~)3)cp0d!?C1JIVI=tI( Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.’

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Re: [cryptography] To Protect and Infect Slides
by John Young 09 Jan '14

09 Jan '14

Jake's, Assange's and others' emphasis at 30c3 was to pursue technological offenses rather than futile expectation of political, financial and legal controls of spying which inevitably confirm what spies do, for it is in their interest to support spyin and secrecy to maintain hegemonic, heirarchial institutions under "the rule of law." Reminder, at the origin of cypherpunks there was a crackdown on encryption as a munitions. That skirmish was thought to have been won. Now Snowden has revealed that victory was a delusion, the real one-sided battle was fought surreptiously in secret, not only by contaminating crypto but by development of bypasses, implants, backdoors, booby traps, ruses, scams, bribes, dual-hatted contracts with crypto-hackers. Can an openly avowed combat on the technologies of political control (1) work or will it be demonized, fought by secret underhanded means? Public debate deployed as a ruse in the 1990s as now. (1) An Appraisal of the Technologies of Political Control http://cryptome.org/stoa-atpc.htm This combat is about far more than crypto and coders must be supplemented with all the discplines of science and technology which are now serving industry and the "lawful" hegemons. 30c3 advocated a direct attack on these means, not wait for the public debate to be rigged in favor of the hegemon with PR, propaganda, lobbying, bribery, contracts, scare stories, terrifying incidents, the customary dirty fighting and tricks of spies and "defense" industry. Is that technological attack on the political, financial, legal hegemon likely to succeed? Or will the crackdown on armed (technological) dissent become as violent as it has in the past? There is a likelihood encryption will be restricted, by fiat, by planting weaknesses, by covert attacks, by technological bypasses, by rigged failures to create doubt of effectiveness. That was the way CryptoAG operation was run. Now the RSA ploy is operative. Is the effect of Snowden to be a series of ploys and ruses. Worse, hop on board the paranoia train, is Snowden a disinfo op for leaking gobs of ruses? Musings: A singular feature of hegemons is that they are dominated by "self-regulating organizations" which set the terms and conditions of the ruling entity, assure enforcement of the rules, and perpetuate themselves under "self-regulation." These are successors of royalty which instead of divine right, backed by military power, they invoke the "Constitution," a law which distinctively empowers "lawful" behavior according to the rules of the hegemon. No wonder the US promotes constitutional government around the planet, backed by military power, most often by denigrating other forms of government. A striking parallel is the rise of the clerics in Europe as an alternative to religious hegemons. From clerics came lawyerly self-regulating hegemons. A new religion hidden within supremacist judges' black robes. Enough of lawful self-regulation in secrecy, unpunishable by lawful means. Justice is out of control, prison populations stuffed, bloated law enforcement and spies raiding the public till, private spies, cops and mercenaries worse than the official, or indistinguishable. Back to the military which backs the hegemons. Technology controls its effectiveness, thus the need for the hegemons to control manufacture, distribution, ownership and application of military means. Concentration of wealth through government regulation, economic and tax policy, and military supremacy reifies special privileges and exculpations for the enforcers of law. Law->taxation->enforcement->informants->spying-> assassination->military action.

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Re: [cryptography] To Protect and Infect Slides (corrections)
by brian carroll 08 Jan '14

08 Jan '14

sorry: brain damage. correction for brain-blip misinfo... so an illusion may exist or > persist of 'no control' or 'wildness' while thoroughly accounted for at > another level or layer, where the specs are closed by the originators > and root of one level may NOT access root of another, or those combined > (correction: root of one level may not access root of another) Hayek, Keynes, Hegel, Marx and others had 'some truth' > yet it is not absolute truth within language as language, > as it is mediated. these are signs, patterns, instead that > are referenced, not truth itself. it is trap, just like when i > refer to an author and seek to present their views yet this > is a limit or skew is inherent and perhaps even inaccurate, > not only my views though their views also, potentially also > in error, not absolute in correctness, yet believed to be as > if biblical conveyance that is to be knelt down before and > served as if higher, even, as if guiding light, when that same > light may not be as bright as direct observation shared by > and between people of the same phenomena modeled in > parameters more accurate or beyond those of the past mucked this up badly- was not to imply my writing biblical, instead that 'ideas' become theology, referenced text then have faith-based aspect institutionalized, structuralized as shared belief systems. sinning against ideology if going against consensus in its inaccuracy, all of it corruptible as ideas in their errored state and within language and social relations, as it becomes or is ungrounded, etc, then having this be the basis for exchange, development i think this same thing holds true for patents, of unshared > identity which then splits and DIVIDES the shared condition > into a 'shared group relation' as an ideological impossibility: > > (patent1a) <--> (patent1b) <--|--> (patent2) > ...correction: splits and divides the shared condition. (please ignore that it does not make grammatical sense) note: gotta say it, because it is relevant- i have social skills of a 10 year old, never developed or kept pace with others due to learning/behavioral deficit; not good with groups or social relations unless about ideas or internet comms; (aspergers) and, writing skills are horrendous, subpar by far, some of it involving deteriorated brain function. lysdexia also ubiquitous issue, i blame phonics.

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Re: HTML on-list messages, top-posting
by shelley＠misanthropia.info 08 Jan '14

08 Jan '14

On Wed, Jan 8, 2014, at 02:35 PM, staticsafe wrote: (snip) > > Most mailing lists I've encountered do not mess with the reply-to > header. cryptome & libtech do (just two I can think of right off) Btw: yes, I hate html on lists too. Will try not to reply using my shitty mobile email client when I'm away from real email!

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HTML on-list messages, top-posting
by rysiek 08 Jan '14

08 Jan '14

Hi there, since we're already deep into Usenet territory, I'll just leave this message here and see what happens. -- Pozdr rysiek

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Re: [cryptography] To Protect and Infect Slides (addenda)
by brian carroll 08 Jan '14

08 Jan '14

context: forgot to mention overriding hypothesis that state of insecure crypto - as with nukes - may be price of peace for cold war reunification in improved framework, thus structural duplicity has wider impact than inside states alone, could also bridge state-state secure relations in parallel with those that are insecure, allowing for advanced governing relations; in this way, broken crypto could represent deeper truth of the inside condition than what is able to be written about, yet exists as consciousness for those in the industry, etc, given what perspective, parameters, values, in the deception On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 11:45 AM, <dan(a)geer.org> wrote: > > > 5) another realization upon hearing the 30c3 talk of Jacob Appelbaum > > was the 'earth firewall' then indicates that the NSA controls the > internet, > > and that it is not operating as a subset within it, and instead > everything > > that occurs is within its domain.... > > The Internet is not controlled, i.e., there is a power vacuum > that will soon be filled. There are many, many players and soon > to be more. The question to be contemplated, if any, is this: > Do you prefer that the competing claims of control over the > Internet be resolved by way of (1) dramatic Balkanization or > by way of (2) making the Internet an organ of world government? > > A thought experiment, if needing one: is VoIP a part of the > Internet or is it not, that is do you have two networks in your > home/office or one? > > --dan > >

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Re: [cryptography] To Protect and Infect Slides
by Jacob Appelbaum 08 Jan '14

08 Jan '14

Kevin W. Wall: > On Tue, Dec 31, 2013 at 3:10 PM, John Young <jya(a)pipeline.com> wrote: > >> 30c3 slides from Jacob Appelbaum: >> >> http://cryptome.org/2013/12/appelbaum-30c3.pdf (3.8MB) >> > > And you can find his actual prez here: > <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0w36GAyZIA> > > Worth the hour, although I'm sure your blood > pressure will go up a few points. > I'm also happy to answer questions in discussion form about the content of the talk and so on. I believe we've now released quite a lot of useful information that is deeply in the public interest. All the best, Jacob

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Private Distributed Hash Tables
by Rich Jones 08 Jan '14

08 Jan '14

Far too much yap yap yappin' around here lately.. cpunks write code, remember? Let's get back to business. Here's an idea for a private, censorship-resistant communication/file sharing system with integrated invitations and access control. I don't think I've ever seen this before, but it's quite possible that people have discussed this idea previously. Either way, I don't know of any implementations yet. Problem ======= The current P2P file sharing landscape is divided up into two spaces: 1) private tracker communities (what.cd // Demonoid // etc) which provide high quality network speeds and file quality through moderation, but which are often subject to outages due to centralization, and 2) the single giant BitTorrent 'peer exchange' distributed hash table, which provides universal file access and fault-tolerance, but at the cost of abuse and surveillance of those participating. Ideally, we want a peer-to-peer community which is decentralized and fault-tolerant, but with enough authority to maintain a high network quality and private enough to avoid open surveillance. Proposed Solution ======= It might be possible to combine the exclusivity and moderation of private trackers with the fault-tolerance of distributed hash tables by having each private table operate with a certificated-authority based public key infrastructure. Essentially, to participate in the DHT, peers must cryptographically prove that they have been invited to participate. Power and trust flow down a through a concentric certificate web. A client's authority in the network is a function of how far away from the root authority they are (not dissimilar to Scientology's hierarchy.) Clients should automatically respect commands coming from those higher up the cert chain or from those closer to the root than they are, and should listen to, but not automatically respect, commands from those lower down the cert chain or from "lower-ranking" clients. * Bootstrapping and Invitation The very first user of the network will have to generate a root certificate. He is then able to generate new signing certificates, which he can give to new users of a network to allow them the ability to access the network. These new users should be able to use their own certificates to do the same for their own new users. (This could be done with certificate signing requests coming from potential new users as well, but that might come at the cost of a slightly more complicated user experience). * Revocation Bannings can be performed by issuing updates to a network-wide revocation list. Clients will automatically respect revocations coming from superiors, and may or may not choose to respect revocations coming from underlings. * Implementation Everything needed to create the heart of this should exist already in Kademlia and OpenSSL. BitTorrent could serve as the basis for the file-sharing application, but vanilla BitTorrent has a content discovery problem, so I'd suggest that any implementations of BitTorrent on Private Distributed Hash Tables should have some kind of discovery BEP included as well, possibly one which uses the authority system of the PDHT to verify files. There's also a possibility there for what you might call "trusted amnesia" - the ability for a user with a high authority to publish verified documents to the whole network without having to broadly expose themselves as the source of the content by having peers in their same trust level sign their content, forget the source, then increase the availability by one access level. Anyway, that's the sketch. Any thoughts? Rich

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Stealing J. Edgar Hoover's secrets.
by Jim Bell 07 Jan '14

07 Jan '14

Just saw this on Yahoo. Seems appropriate to mention this, given Snowden, Manning, etc. http://screen.yahoo.com/new-york-times/stealing-j-edgar-hoover-secrets-1309…

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Swartz, Weev & radical libertarian lexicon (Re: Jacob Appelbaum in Germany - Aaron Swartz)
by Jim Bell 07 Jan '14

07 Jan '14

From: Cari Machet <carimachet(a)gmail.com> To: rysiek <rysiek(a)hackerspace.pl> Cc: cypherpunks(a)cpunks.org Sent: Tuesday, January 7, 2014 10:29 AM Subject: Re: Swartz, Weev & radical libertarian lexicon (Re: Jacob Appelbaum in Germany - Aaron Swartz) On 1/7/14, Adam Back <adam(a)cypherspace.org> wrote: [deletia] >>took it to the next level including >> physical >> intrusion & hiding equipment. But MIT (and to a lesser extent JSTOR) let >> him down badly as did some of his academic friends and its tragic that he >> was a victim of some extremely over reaching imbalanced law the CFAA [3], >> aggressively prosecuted by self-agrandizing politically motivated, and >> almost legally immune deeply flawed US federal prosecution and plea bargain >> system, >yes but i think from my understanding it wasnt the amount of prison >time or the money but the fact that he wld have to plead guilty to 13 >felony counts - he would not get to serve in the government ... vote >etc From personal experience, I can shed light on the issue of voting as a felon. Contrary to what many people seem to think, most states seem to allow 'felons' to vote, eventually. (Some while they are in jail or prison; some immediately when they are released; some when they are off parole.) In my own case, the state of Washington's Constitution says that only felons guilty of "infamous crimes" lose their right to vote, and Washington state law defines an "infamous crime" as a crime punishable by one or more years incarceration in the _state_ penitentiary. Since my 'crime' was Federal, not state, it did not satisfy this condition, so I was not even prohibited from voting while I was in prison. (Though I never tried to vote while I was in prison; And, though, I did not learn that they didn't understand this fact until my release in late December 2009). I sent many emails to the Secretary of State of Washington stating this obvious position in early 2010, and they responded by repeatedly stating the contrary, commonly-thought position. They were never able to openly acknowledge I was right, although by my release from prison in March 2012, I checked their website and saw that they had corrected their prior, incorrect position. Jim "Al Capone" Bell

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