Re: oppose nomination of John Ashcroft
At 9:00 AM -0500 1/20/01, Declan McCullagh wrote: Reno probably didn't expect the situation to, um, blow up in her face. It is also undisputed that if they wanted to avoid a show of force, they could have nabbed Koresh during his jogs around the property line or whatnot in the morning. Reese, you blather too much. I also believe that neither Waco nor Ruby Ridge were expected to go down as they did. Neither Reno nor Clinton gained anything from these debacles. What I fault is the general trend toward "militarizing the police," especially the trend toward using federal police instead of local sheriffs and law enforcement. In both cases, Waco and Ruby Ridge, local law enforcement was bypassed, even "kept out of the loop." This should not be acceptable in a constitutional republic consisting of states. There are also fundamental problems with the War on Some Weapons, the War on Some Drugs, and the War on Some Religions. Claims that Randy Weaver had sawed an inch or so off a shotgun, part of an entrapment by Feds who wanted his cooperation in other matters, tell us how close we are coming to being a police state (though we are not yet there in any plausible sense). Claims that David Koresh was mingling in unapproved ways with young women, or was selling weapons illegally (never proved, even after the ashes had been sifted), should have been handled locally, not by calling in federal ninjas. As for Ashcroft, we'll see. Bush won, so Bush gets to appoint his staff. The whole "review by the Senate" thing is a relic of the McCarthy era, actually, and should be done away with. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: More on G3s
At 7:45 AM -0600 1/12/01, Jim Choate wrote: Go back to the archives and you will find Tim May claiming that ANY HK rifle with *3 (eg 93 or G3) is a .223 whereas the *1's (eg 91) are .308. When in fact the '3 means .223' applied ONLY to the '90' (ie 91 or 93) class weapons. The reality (which Tim never admited either) is that a G3 IS in fact a 91, or the other way around if you prefer historical lineage. The G3 was the mil-spec and the 91 was the civilian clone. But hey, since when was Tim interested in FACTS? Never. Nonsense. I have known what a 91 and a 93 (and a 94) were for many years. Almost bought a 91 in 1975, _did_ buy a clone. You still haven't responded to what I sent out after my own search of the archives: At 8:51 AM -0700 12/23/97, Jim Choate wrote: Forwarded message: Date: Tue, 23 Dec 1997 01:08:04 -0700 From: Tim May [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Best Cypherpunk long gun (fwd) I can't agree that the HK 91 (the .308 version) is a popular sniper weapon. Military and police snipers the world over differ strongly with you... Beside, it's the 93/G3 not the 91 (thought they do share a lot of commen base pieces) that is the sniper rifle. I believe you will also find that the .308 is the base caliber for all versions. Your wording above would indicate the 91 was .308 while the 93 was a different caliber, this is incorrect. Visit the HK home page... This speaks for itself, especially: "Your wording above would indicate the 91 was .308 while the 93 was a different caliber, this is incorrect" In fact, the 91 *is* a .308 and the 93 *is* a different caliber. Do you still dispute this? He went on and on about the '3 means .223' and that this applied to ALL HK weapons. I said no such thing. Please produce the message. Tim's general approach (Declan's as well) is "if they disagree with me they must be stupid". What you'll find is Tim making argument after argument but he never defends them. Actually, many of us have wasted far more time on your crankish ideas than they deserve. Come on Tim, show us the email wher I (not you) claim Gauss's Law doesn't apply? Show us the email where I (not you) claim the G3 is not .308. For example, your claim: "Beside, it's the 93/G3 not the 91 (thought they do share a lot of commen base pieces) that is the sniper rifle." The 93 is a .223, not a .308, and it is _not_ the sniper rifle. Further, your phrase "G3 not the 91" shows your basic confusion. The G3 is the military version of the 91, not of the 93. Trivial points, in some sense, but deeply illustrative of your mania for stating something that is incorrect and then never admitting your mistake, even years later. Which is why even your co-workers acknowledge your crankishness. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: NONSTOP Crypto Query
At 11:54 AM -0500 1/12/01, John Young wrote: One of the Tempest FOIA docs NSA released recently concerns NONSTOP, a term whose definition is classified as SECRET. About half of the document, NACSEM 5112, "NONSTOP Evaluation Techniques," has been redacted, and we'll publish it soon. From the clear text, NONSTOP appears to refer to protection against compromising emanations of cryptographic systems, and maybe in particular radio crypto systems. Another document refers to NONSTOP testing and protection being especially needed on vehicles, planes and ships. We've been unable to retrieve more than a few words from the redacted portions (by use of xerography to reveal text below the overwrites), and would appreciate any leads on what NONSTOP means. The Tandem Computers "NONSTOP" was a product line in use by various government agencies for secure (fault-tolerant) computing for a long time. I'd look there for starters. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
More on G3s
[Sent this morning, 1/11, to algebra.com address. Not received as of 11 hours later. So am sending out to cyberpass.net address.] At 1:12 PM +0100 1/11/01, Tom wrote: Jim Choate wrote: Up until then I thought I did too...I"m not so sure any more. It's not a clone of the HK G3 as it was explained to me, it was apparently used as an interim weapon when the German Army dropped the HK G3 as a standard issue weapon a few years ago (ala G11). Maybe FAL, they're selling a 'G1' rifle that uses caseless ammo? Though I can't find a reference to any such rifle. Maybe it was CETME you do see their gun pushed as the 'G3' (the HK is a 'clone' or derived weapon from the Spanish gun). a friend of mine was an officer in the german army until very recently (he decided to get a real job :) ) - give me 24 hours and I'll tell you exactly what the past and current standard issue weapons are and what kind of ammo they fire. On Choate's point above, it is not FAL (a rifle, but I assume Choate must mean the maker of the FAL, Fabrique Nationale, now owned by another company, IIRC) who are making a caseless ammo rifle. Rather, it is in fact H-K. The G11 has been in development for close to 30 years now. (H-K are _also_ owned by another company. Last I heard, a British company bought H-K, though the factories and design groups remain in Germany.) Most NATO countries have now adopted some variant of the 5.56 mm cartridge, in either M-16-type variants or in bullpup designs like the excellent Steyr AUG or the newer HK G36 (with a civilian model, the SL8). Neither the caseless ammo of the H-K G11 not the flechette-firing prototypes are getting wide acceptance. And as relates to Choate's "I was right" point, repeated again recently, the G3 in use by the German army was most definitely a 7.62 mm, i.e., a .308 Winchester. It was _not_ the 5.56 mm variant, at least not for wide use. (I say this because quibblers like Choate like to find examples where _someone_ used a 5.56 mm and then say "See, I was RIGHT!") --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Tales from an Alternate Reality
At 12:23 PM -0500 1/10/01, Declan McCullagh wrote: It's amazing how Jim can be so earnest and so completely wrong. Actually, I've known him too long: It's not remarkable, but predictable. (Hint: U.S. copyright law does not make mere possession or archiving an offense. Try distribution, performance, etc.) On Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 09:29:37AM -0600, Jim Choate wrote: It has been proposed that forwarding a URL with a page attachment is copyright infringement. Taint so. The situation is equivalent to a group of friends sitting around a table and only one paper among them. As they discuss a particular article they pass it among themselves. This is fair use and this is what forwarding a URL and content attachment to a mailing list is. The copyright infringement issue arises when you SAVE that post. The real question of copyright infringement is the archivist who saves it but doesn't have permission to hold a copy of that material. It is the act of archiving digital data that is infringement and not sharing of access. Strictly speaking the ONLY group who has a legal requirement to strip attachments is archive sites. Declan, Jim Choate is actually correct in what he says above. The laws of physics, the history of the United States and Europe, even mathematics...all are as he describes them. In his world. In "Choate Prime," the parallel universe which he lives in, the Constitution is as he describes it, electromagnetics work as he describes it, prime numbers have the properties he has told us about, and copyright law works in the way he describes. As a reporter yourself, you should be appreciative of these reports from Choate Prime, that parallel world off-kilter from our own. --Klaus! von Future Prime -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: IP, forwarded posts, and copyright infringement
At 12:54 PM -0500 1/10/01, Declan McCullagh wrote: [Jim sent me the below message directly without any indication that it was also sent to the list. But from past experience, I know better. Another example of not-quite-adequate Choatian social norms.] Anyway, Jim is conflating physical control over an instantiation of IP with the rights conferred by IP law. If someone copies Microsoft Word (or a Tom Clancy novel) onto a CDROM and gives it to me, I am not liable. -Declan At 11:36 AM 1/10/01 -0600, Jim Choate wrote: (Hint: U.S. copyright law does not make mere possession or archiving an offense. Try distribution, performance, etc.) Hint: WRONG. Simply possessing a paperback book that has had its cover removed as a sign of 'destroyed' status is in fact a crime. Used book stores that have them in stock can be charged accordingly. So, if I tear the cover off of a paperback book that I legally own (bought, for example), Choate's claim is that this "is in fact a crime"? Gee, so much for scienter. So much for proof of actual criminal action. So much for tort law. Jim, please call the police, as I have just torn the cover off of a book I own. Worse, I just cut the tags off of a mattress. Call before I commit more crimes. Fucking retard. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: Refutations Considered Unnecessary
At 1:49 PM -0500 1/10/01, John Young wrote: Well, yes, I owe the cypherpunks founders an apology, so apology sent. Our rump session after Steve's talk last night, to which he didn't come, put me face to face with 20 nyms and let me tell you online has its virtues -- the main one being never having to have people stare at your TLA forehead mark and you at theirs. Everybody in the room said they're working on a book, really, but what they needed was a writer to burnish the jewels. There was a writer there but incognito, knowing what happens in NYC at any gathering when pols, doctors, lawyers and thieves lock onto someone who has authentic literary skills. Well, I went through my "working on a book" phase in 1988-91, when I was working feverishly for many hours a day on my Great Crypto Anarchic Novel. (At least many of the ideas for the novel turned out to be useful for the Next Phase, which was Cypherpunks.) I, at least, never fell prey to the Usual Malarkey of thinking that all I needed to do was feed some ideas to a Real Writer who would then help me finish it, or collaborate. Fact is, generating a book is hard work. In terms of lining up the publishers, editors, etc. The actual writing may not be too hard, based on some of the fluff I see out there. (Some of the 120-page pieces of fluff by Silicon Valley types, for example, which look like something easily generated by anyone with even modest writing skills. In fact, I'm sure most of these books by Valley CEOs are, naturally, ghost-written.) Even a total stranger at the bar up front had a story which he said makes the stuff in CRYPTO mere child's play. NSA-trained he claimed to be and a long time battler of corporate evildoing. Great piles of files to prove it, only a ghost writer needed. See! At least we don't hear this kind of tripe at Bay Area gatherings. People are too aware of how foolish this stuff sounds. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: Refutations Considered Unnecessary
At 3:52 PM -0500 1/10/01, Declan McCullagh wrote: On Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 10:06:25AM -0800, Tim May wrote: e) Brin's book would be just another drop in the ocean, anyway. His vision of the future is unlikely in the extreme (t.v. cameras in police offices...sure, whatever), so refuting his "bad memes" is just a waste of time Right. Everyone's forgotten it; books like that (and Crypto, and Database Nation) have a short half-life. And of course there are at least a _dozen_ books on the general issue of "privacy." One of the Kennedy's co-authored one (or at least agreed to have her name put on the cover, perhaps). Whit Diffie co-authored one. And so on. A dozen, at least. Nothing new, either. There are even a bunch of recent popularizations of crypto, steganography, PGP, etc. Do they really matter? At the margins, sure. Some kid in junior high school is perhaps discovering Singh's book on "Secret Codes" (or whatever the exact title is) the same way Whit Diffie read one of those early crypto books when he was a kid. Ditto for political books. It's not that I'm jaded, it's that there are TOO MANY DAMNED BOOKS out there. I spend a lot of time in Borders and Bookshop Santa Cruz, two very large and well-stocked bookstores in my town. (Declan can confirm this, though he may not have seen the new Borders yet.) I browse, in the classical sense, the New Books section most times I'm in there. The turnover is incredible. The range of topics is incredible, from climbings of an obscure peak in the Himalayas, to what women want in their sociology classes, to what the AOL-Time Warner deals means for prospects of peace on the Korean peninsula. And, every month, new books on quantum weirdness, new books on online privacy, new books on the history of the Web, etc. A flood of writers, a flood of books. The topics get more specialized in the same way Ph.D. theses have gotten so specialized. The grand unifications are few and far between. Who reads this stuff? We are drowning in a sea of factoids and well-researched books on obscure Beat Generation poets and books on the impact of technology. Big deal. Very few current books actually are _important_. (There are some, IMO. "The Elegant Universe," "Noah's Flood," "Emerging Viruses," in recent years. The novels of Stephenson, Vinge, Gibson, in past years. "Atlas Shrugged," whatever flaws it may have. Etc.) With the reported declines in reading amongst school children (various reasons, from poor schooling to lots of other choices like videos and games), and this explosion of titles, and with bookstores bigger than they ever were when I was a kidhmmmhhh, lots of interesting forces about to collide. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: As Dot-Coms Go Bust in the U.S., Bermuda Hosts a LittleBoomlet
At 3:46 PM -0500 1/10/01, Declan McCullagh wrote: On Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 12:22:52PM -0500, John Young wrote: The full story of crypto is yet to be written, in particular its deceptions, perhaps a piece by Vin McLelland, one by Declan, one by Tim May, if not by distributed cyperhpunks not quite so malleable as solo individuals given privileged access on the condition that . . . True. As a journalist, I do my best to avoid those conditions. I think of them (probably not an original thought) as entangling alliances. I could easily cobble together a book proposal that would include chapters by cypherpunk types; I'd edit. I've been thinking of writing a book for a while -- even had meetings with publishers in '96 -- but it would take too much time. Editing would be far easier. I hope you don't do this. There have been several of these kinds of collections--a guy at MIT has done at least a couple of them (I forget his name, though three of my short pieces are in one of his books: the books cost $40-60 or so, for a damned paperback, which is why I don't have my own copy. Even at this high price, they don't pay for submissions and they don't even give out copies to contributors!). What you'd end up with is a printed collection of a bunch of mini-rants or survey articles, whose total verbiage is just a tiny snapshot of the field. There's probably a role for a good book on, say, "digital money," with a mix of overview articles and detailed articles. This would be a _lot_ of work, and the editor would need to be well-versed in the field. But not a book on "Cypherpunk" themes. Too many seemingly-unrelated areas, too much background to cover (ironically, compared to digital money, but I think this is so). And Yog help you if you end up just putting together whatever junky stuff people are willing to submit. What about that timing of CRYPTO release and the NSA show? Ah, it was a lackluster show and not that important. I didn't see it, but I assume it was like most of the past t.v. shows on the NSA and codes and such: Discovery Channel, History Channel, BBC "Horizon," CNN, etc. These shows are easy for producers to put together: lots of shots of radomes and antennas and NSA buildings, a tour of the Cryptologic Museum, some obligatory juicy stuff about Enigma and Turing, interviews with talking heads about the need for blah blah, and so on. Feh. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: Bell Case Subpoena
At 5:09 PM -0500 1/8/01, John Young wrote: Today at 4:30 PM two Treasury agents, Tom Jack and Matthew Mc Whirr, served me a Subpoena to Testify Before Grand Jury, in US District Court of Western Washington, Seattle, WA, on January 25, 2001, 9:00 AM. Robb London, AUSA, is the applicant. The subpoena states in bold caps "We request that you do not disclose the existence of this subpoena, because such a disclosure may make it more difficult to conduct the investigation." ... Please provide any and all documents, papers, letters, computer disks, photographs, notes, objects, information, or other items in your possession or under your control, including electronically stored or computer records, which: 1. Name, mention, describe, discuss, involve or relate to James Dalton Bell, a/k/a Jim Bell, or By the way, John, thanks for the "heads up." I purged my archives of Jim Bell e-mail sent directly to me, though I left on my system the e-mail he copied the list on. (Yes, I purged the back-ups, too. A good reason not to back up e-mail to CD-Rs.) --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Declan's book
At 6:31 PM -0500 1/10/01, Declan McCullagh wrote: On Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 01:11:01PM -0800, Tim May wrote: I hope you don't do this. There have been several of these kinds of collections--a guy at MIT has done at least a couple of them (I forget his name, though three of my short pieces are in one of his books: the books cost $40-60 or so, for a damned paperback, which is why I don't have my own copy. Even at this high price, they don't pay for submissions and they don't even give out copies to contributors!). As someone who makes the vast bulk of his income from speaking fees, I wouldn't undertake such a project unless I could pay contributors and get a generous number of copies to hand out. Seems only fair. "Pay contributors"...such a radical, but hokey, concept. Without going into details about my financial situation, the prospect of a dollar a word, or three, or whatever it is publishers typically pay contributors these days, is not enticing in the slightest. The phrase "I don't get out of bed for less than..." comes to mind. A share of the profits might be, though I expect there would be little in the way of profits for a non-bestseller. It's true that I don't get paid a single dime for the things I write for Usenet, or mailing lists, even for the things others choose to include in their books (which I give permission for, when they contact me). But I also don't have a schedule to adhere to, I write about what interests me, and I don't have any obligation to do extensive research of the footnote variety. If someone wants to pay me, say, $10,000 for whatever I can crank out in a couple of days, I guess I'd be willing to contribute something to such an edited book. If rewrites were called for, or more research were to be needed, then I'd want more money. Colin Powell recently got paid $200,000 for a 30-minute off-the-cuff speech on some "why foreigh policy matters" b.s. topic. Of course, it was underwritten by a Lebanese "businessman" said in news reports to have close ties to Syrian intelligence, so do the math. A legal way to buy influence in our strange society. If Colin Powell can give N of these b.s. speeches a year, my thoughts are surely worth $10K for a day or two's worth of writing. Of course, this won't happen. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: The uses of pseudo-links
At 8:04 AM -0800 1/9/01, Ray Dillinger wrote: On Tue, 9 Jan 2001, Trei, Peter wrote: [Jim: It's ok that you have no problem with your ineffective methods of giving pointers to articles, but your wasting your own and other's time - there's simply no reason for people to follow your links, since they are generally useless] Actually, not *entirely* useless. Usually right after jim talks about an article and posts a link that doesn't point at it, someone else will post a correct link. If Jim just shut up, some of these stories probably would escape our notice. In the course of correcting his errors, people do provide useful information. Your definition of "useful" is different from mine. I believe lists like ours should primarily be about discussions and points of view, not a third-hand CNET or Register or Slashdot. There are many Web sources of breaking news (not that a lot of the "functional quantum computer" sorts of stories are usually breaking news...). Personally, I like it when someone finds a news item, provides a detailed URL, even quotes (in ASCII, not MIME!) a paragraph or two, and then comments on it and connects it to Cypherpunks issues. Merely dumping out "general science" items, with general URLs, is just plain abusing the list. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: Bell Case Subpoena
At 12:33 PM -0800 1/9/01, Bill Stewart wrote: On Monday 08 January 2001 16:09, John Young wrote: You are also commanded to bring with you the following document(s) or object(s): Please provide any and all documents, papers, letters, computer disks, photographs, notes, objects, information, or other items in your possession or under your control, including electronically stored or computer records, which: 1. Name, mention, describe, discuss, involve or relate to James Dalton Bell, a/k/a Jim Bell, or 2. Were previously possessed, owned, created, sent by, transported, or oftherwise affiliated with James Dalton Bell, a/k/a Jim Bell, or How would you know if it was sent by him unless it had a digital signature that you are willing to testify in court was know to belong to him and had not been comprimised? I'd think there'd be serious problems with most of the evidence in this case being hearsay, except stuff specifically posted by Jim Bell. ven a "From: Jim Bell" doesn't prove anything. Besides knowing this from first principles (about spoofing, signatures, etc.), we have seen this demonstrated on this very list. Recall that various posters were claiming to be "Toto" during the unfolding of that situation. Recall that Detweiler (presumably) used to issue posts with my name attached, with Nick Szabo's name attached, with Eric Hughes' name attached, etc. These points were never tested in the court cases of Bell or Parker. John Young could quite easily show up in Seattle with _none_ of the items the subpoena calls for. If questioned, he could say he had no means of knowing if the articles, posts, etc. were in fact from Bell or were generated by Infowar cointelpro operatives in law enforcement or even by Detweiler or May or whomever. Also, even if he chooses to comply and grep through his mail archives for "any and all documents...mention...discussJim Bell," this would presumably turn up many hundreds of such documents. And the provenance will be unknown (an ordinary mail spool, or Eudora folder, or Outlook Express whatever, etc., being editable and alterable). John Young (or anyone else) could have edited his mail spool to put words into "Bell"'s alleged mail. I expect this upcoming trial will not be the case which hinges on these kinds of issues, but some court will someday have to contend with this utter malleability of received mail files. Unlike paper letters which can be forensically analyzed, e-mail is nearly meaningless. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: The Cost of Natural Gas [was Re: The Cost of California Liberalism]
At 2:37 PM -1000 12/29/00, Reese wrote: At 03:33 PM 12/29/00 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Looking at the queue of plant requests within California they also seem to be obsessed with building them in highly populated areas. Easy commute for the workers, and a large pool to draw workers from? Most of the proposed new plants are very, very small. Nearly all in populated areas are natural gas-fired plants, with minimal-to-zero burden on the local environment. For example, a couple of such small plants have been built in the San Jose area in recent years. Environmentalists even favor building such a plant over letting Cisco expand, to name a recent newspaper issue. What these new plants ARE NOT is the kind of large nuclear plant comparable in size to the highly successful Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Station. That plant was completed more than 15 years ago. It is in an unpopulated area, between Half Moon Bay and Pismo Beach, and west of San Luis Obispo. A similar plant was once planned for Bodega Bay, northwest of San Francisco, but it was blocked by tree huggers in the early 70s. Another consideration, for building closer to where the demand is. These are self-evident considerations. Especially for the "micro plants" described above. Economies of scale, etc. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: The Cost of Natural Gas [was Re: The Cost of CaliforniaLiberalism]
At 11:22 PM -0800 12/26/00, Raymond D. Mereniuk wrote: Tim May [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote Lost on your typically smug Canadian analysis has been any objective analysis of markets for power. Do you know, for example, that California as a state is a _net exporter_ of power to the Northwest and especially to Western Canada at certain times of the year? In the fall and winter, in fact, when hydroelectric generation rates in BC and Washington are reduced. I don't know where you get your information but I doubt your statements. California is a net exporter of power is suspect, lets see the details here. I said "at certain times of the year." British Columbia is tied by treaty arrangements (Columbia River Treaty, 1961) to the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), and is, VERY SIGNIFICANTLY, now part of same grid that is the ISO, the Independent System Operator, mostly based in California. Read the following and weep for your beloved Canadian independence: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001208/ts/california_power_dc_3.html For example, "`We're about to find out next week just how interconnected the Western grid really is,'' Patrick Dorinson, spokesman for the California Independent System Operator (ISO) told Reuters. "The ISO operates about 75 percent of the California power transmission grid, the biggest part of a network of high voltage lines that spans from northern British Columbia to the northwest Baja California and as far east as the Rocky Mountains. " Between the Columbia River Treaty power-sharing and the Western Grid, it's all one main grid. Importantly, my point that California exports power _at certain times of the year_ is covered in the material below: For example: http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/001205/n05491394.html "CONCERNS OVER NORTHWEST SUPPLY CRUNCH The crisis has now spread to the northwest states of Washington and Oregon, where electricity is often used for heating. Those states export power to California in summer to help it meet its load but flows reverse in winter as heating demand grows in the northern states. ... ``We have always taken for granted that California will help out the Northwest in winter as we help them in summer,'' saidDulcy Mahar, spokeswoman for the Portland, Ore.-based Bonneville Power Administration, noting the Northwest is hoping that Canada will be able to provide some help in an emergency." and from http://nepa.eh.doe.gov/eis/eis0171/0171chap3.htm "The peak load demands of the Pacific Northwest and California occur at different times. The Pacific Northwest peak demands occur in the winter, and California's peak demands occur in the summer. During the summer, the hydro-based Pacific Northwest and BPA systems tend to have excess capacity, which can be used to help meet California's summer peak demands. California's thermal-based system tends to have excess capacity in the winter, which can help the Pacific Northwest meet its winter peak. Full use of both systems can reduce the need for new resources in each system. BPA currently has several seasonal energy and capacity for energy exchange contracts in effect with a number of California utilities. Sorry, this is where you are showing your Childishly naive understanding of the energy business. In the energy business (natural gas wise) if you commit to the supply and build infrastructure you get lower prices. I re-state my initial premise, Californians have a lot to learm about energy economics! If you don't commit, you pay more! --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: The Cost of Natural Gas [was Re: The Cost of CaliforniaLiberalism]
You don't get it, do you? At 11:50 PM -0800 12/24/00, Raymond D. Mereniuk wrote: was created by un-expected demand in California. Another issue in this problem, as in this month and next, is low water levels in the northwest causing lower than expected power generating capacity. Lost on your typically smug Canadian analysis has been any objective analysis of markets for power. Do you know, for example, that California as a state is a _net exporter_ of power to the Northwest and especially to Western Canada at certain times of the year? In the fall and winter, in fact, when hydroelectric generation rates in BC and Washington are reduced. In your kind of lingo, "British Columbia failed to build enough new plants." Markets are not simple. Prices rise, prices fall. To claim that California is now the primary cause of your higher heating costs, boo-hoo, is childishly naive. If a power generating utility had built new power plants and commited to a fuel supply (and the accompanying infrastructure) the likelihood of unexpected prices increases would be much lower. See above. Childishly naive. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
More half-baked social planning ideas
At 9:25 AM -0800 12/25/00, Ray Dillinger wrote: Just an observation, but most of the specific causes of this crisis point strongly to one general cause -- ie, there are too many people in California. More than the local water supply can handle. More than power can be generated for locally (unless someone builds a nuke powerplant, and you can already hear the Nimby's screaming...). More than food can be grown for without exhausting water tables to irrigate the central valley. Not even _close_ to being true. Yes, there are many people. "Too many" is an esthetic judgment. The water coming off of the Sierras is more than enough for twice the current population, providing they all don't try to have large green grass yards (cf. xeriscaping). The market solution for water, as it is for power, computers, frisbees, and anything else, is to let the market price goods. If someone wants to pay $3000 a year to keep their lawn green, their choice. As for food production, food is fungible and is shipped where markets want it. Vastly more food, of certain types, is grown in the Central Valley, and in the Salinas Valley (near me), than is consumed locally. Another general cause is that most of the current houses are built stupid. In the 1940's and 1950's houses were built that were quite habitable without constant airconditioning. They had basement windows where air could be drawn in and air was cooled in the basement with scads of thermal contact with the cool earth. California houses have almost _never_ had basements. Check it out. Check the history of houses built throughout the state, going back a century or more. The main "reason" for basements is to put a foundation below the frost line. Mainly for structural reasons: a house built on top of the heave line is subject to thermal heave, cracking the foundation. (Houses can of course be built without basements or partial basements even in cold climes, via careful sinking of foundations. But digging out to below the frost line and then building on top of that was the most common approach.) John Young, as an architect, can no doubt say more about why basements are common in cold climes but much less common in temperate climes. (I lived in coasta France, on the Riviera, for a year. Virtually no houses had basements. Ditto for Italy. Ditto for Greece. Move north, however, and houses start to be built with basements.) By the way, most of the 34 million current California residents live in the coastal strip, from San Diego to LA to Santa Barbara to San Luis Obispo to San Jose to San Francisco and the other Bay Area cities. Most of them don't use air conditioning. (I lived for 5 years in San Diego--no A/C. Lived for 4 years in Santa Barbara--no A/C. Lived for 12 years in Santa Clara--A/C in one of my apartments, which I only used half a dozen times. Lived in Santa Cruz for 14 years--no A/C.) My siblings live in California: no A/C. I can't think of a single person I know who has air conditioning...they may exist, I just can't think of who they might be. There were open airways that circulated air drawn up from the basement through the first and second floor, and windows in the second floor where heated air was allowed to escape. Many of them were made of adobe or other materials with great thermal inertia, which mediated the extremes of temperature. Earth to Ray: Adobe and other thick-walled structures are "deprecated," as the current lingo would have it. I'll let you figure out why. All of these are perfectly sound thermodynamic principles, which have been abandoned because wood-frame concrete slab houses are cheaper to build and home buyers haven't been thinking about the cost of cooling the damn things as part of the purchase price. If building codes were modified, or if contractors and developers had to bear the first ten years of utility costs out of house prices, we'd probably see a substantial reduction in the so-called "need" for power. Bear Do you simply invent this stuff? Cypherpunks has become a dumping ground for half-baked social theorists. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: Questions of size...
At 7:42 PM + 12/12/00, Ben Laurie wrote: Sampo A Syreeni wrote: On Mon, 11 Dec 2000, Ben Laurie wrote: Chambers defines geodesic as "the shortest line on a surface between two points on it" and that is precisely the meaning in general relativity. No question about it. The term also doesn't mean a whole lot when applied as-is in the many instances it is on this list. As Tim put it, it pretty much equates to "cyberpunkish". Not being subscribed to cypherpunks (has S/R improved?) I will have missed that. Signal happens when good writers contribute good articles. Noise happens in the expected ways. Noise is what the delete key, and filters, were made for. As you are apparently reading this from the "DBS" list, you are not seeing any of my contributions. Regrettfully, DBS (and DCSB, or Bearebucks, or whatever Bob is calling his list(s)) is not an "open system." The Cypherpunks tried such a censored list a few years ago, and we rejected the approach. I wrote a large article debunking the "geodesics is about topology" point of view. Others have said similar things. Please don't contribute articles to the Cypherpunks list if you are, as you say, not subscribed. While we don't reject articles by nonsubscribers, as per the above, it is tacky and rude for nonsubscribers to address articles to lists they are not tracking. Thank you, --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
RE: Re: About 5yr. log retention
At 12:45 PM +0100 12/11/00, Tom Vogt wrote: Tim May wrote: At 1:41 PM +0100 12/8/00, Tom Vogt wrote: Me wrote: In English it is preferable to write "I wrote," though "Me wrote" is honored in some subcultures. that part is put in automatically by netscape. I don't usually add obvious statements like "look, I can write" to my mails. :) anyways, my whole point was that for many people, religion is as or even more important than law. I'm sure you have a fair share of them as well. so things can get pretty interesting when 2 such high-level values collide. more interesting than a collision between, say, the law and a more-or-less important demand for privacy. that's the whole point. I know some people just can't help turning every spelling error into an attack on their fundamental values, but frankly, that's not my problem. Lighten up. It was a joke. (I even provided a hint, in the "honored in some cultures.") --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Re: The US mis-election - an oportunity for e-voting..
At 11:58 AM -0500 12/10/00, Robert Guerra wrote: Declan: I completely agree with you that internet voting isn't quite ready fom prime-time just yet. But given the current snafu I highly suspect that there will be a lot of interest in the field. Certainly, I hope one of the few things the new congress will be able to do is set-up a commission to propose new voting standards. Hopefully they will pick a standard that doesn't give rise to problems 30-40 years in the future... personally, if I had a say I'd say they should adopt the same system Canada uses. They use a 100 year old system, had few if any recounts, and managed to count all thier manual ballots in less than 72 hours. It wasn't a close election, was it? Didn't think so. In the U.S., when the election isn't close, the ballots are counted, and recounted, by midnight of the day of the election...maybe by mid-morning the next day. It's the _closeness_ that magnifies potential hinge points into court cases, redefinitions, and recriminations. As for "Hey, kids, let's all put on an electronic vote!," it's been discussed many times here. And elsewhere. RISKS had a major discussion of the...risks. As someone said in recentl weeks, if we really want to see elections stolen efficiently, make them electronic. No paper trail, no evidence, no chads, just pure gleaming bits. --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Re: CDR: RE: Re: About 5yr. log retention
At 1:41 PM +0100 12/8/00, Tom Vogt wrote:
Me wrote:
In English it is preferable to write "I wrote," though "Me wrote" is
honored in some subcultures.
if i were to cloak my desire for privacy in the words of the
Great Squid, would it be more legitimate?
does it matter?
the point is that almost everyone even here is not willing to go to jail
or worse for "another tiny bit of privacy". we don't draw a sharp
boundary. we don't say, for example, that knowing my street is ok, but
knowing my house number is over the line.
and the total population is even worse. the vast majority of internet
users would give you pretty much anything for a minimal return ("one
hour free surfing"), and everything else for a larger one ("$100 for my
political and sexual preferences? sure.")
the muslim veil, on the other hand, IS a sharp boundary. as I understand
it, it is NOT permisable to lift it in public under ANY circumstances.
Me was making a different point, that presumably there is no legal
distinction, at least in America, between the religion of Islam and
the religion of the Great Squid.
As to your language about "it is NOT permissable ...under ANY
circumstances," there are many religious beliefs which are overruled
by law in the U.S. Mormon polygamy (several spouses), for example.
Peyote rituals, for another example.
Though there are some "variations in regulations" allowable for
various religions, such as rules about wearing hats in military
services, etc., there is a very general principle in the U.S. which
says that the law applies equally to all, regardless of religious
beliefs.
(This is a major reason for having a minimal state, with the set of
laws only being the "Schelling points" (a game theory term many of us
like to use) which nearly all persons can agree to.)
The Great Squid has equal standing with Mohammed, in other words.
Things are dramatically different in Germany and other countries, we
all understand. But in the U.S., no particular religion is supposed
to have any special favor in the eyes of the law. There are even
Satanist chaplains/priests in the U.S. armed services.
--Tim May
--
(This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the
election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Fractal geodesic networks
At 8:46 AM -0800 12/8/00, Ray Dillinger wrote: On Thu, 7 Dec 2000, petro wrote: Mr. Brown (in the library with a candlestick) said: (RAH might have called it a geodesic political culture if he hadn't got this strange Marxist idea that politics is just an emergent property of economics :-) Just by the way, how widespread is this use of the word 'geodesic'? Offhand, I'd refer to many of the things I've seen it used for here as 'distributed' or 'fractal'. Is 'geodesic' an accepted term of art for a network or protocol in which all the parts work roughly the same way? Distributed, fractal, peer-to-peer, nonhierarchical, geodesic, silk road, agoric, anarchic, are all terms basically describing the same sort of thing. Which term is whizzier is in the eye of the beholder. Personally, I got tired several years ago of hearing everything described as a "fractal geodesic network." I don't know whether the term was coined by its chief user, Bob Hettinga, or by a similar propagandist, George Gilder, or by someone else. The naming issues are parallel to the issues with "open systems," "bazaar and the cathedral," etc. But I imagine others are tired of hearing me talk about crypto anarchy. I'm not sure "geodesic" captures the important issues. Are merchants in a Baghdad bazaar part of a "fractal geodesic network"? I suppose. But this is just a basic open market, with no top-down rules set. Is the Law Merchant a fractal geodesic network? Whatever. --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Re: Buying Mein Kampf via the Net
At 12:58 PM +0100 12/6/00, Tom Vogt wrote: Tim May wrote: This is misleading. There is much debate about ownership of the copyright, whether it has expired (as would normally be the case after roughly 70 years, whether the licenses sold to other publishers are valid, etc.). it's been changed to 70 years after death of author recently, at least in the US. that would make the expire date 2015. Quite odd that the publisher Houghton Mifflin would say they are donating all royalties since 1979 if in fact no copies have been published since 1945! Even more odd if some of us have copies in our libraries which were published much more recently than 1945. here's what I wrote: only copies printed before 1945 are actually legal, am I missing the link between "legal" and "existing", or did you imagine it? The copies published in the United States are fully legal. Whether Germany likes our laws is not my concern. --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
My plan to deal with subpoenas to testify
At 12:17 PM -0500 12/6/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: On Tue, Dec 05, 2000 at 07:22:30PM -0500, Greg Newby wrote: Bottom line, as usual, is to trust no-one, including ISPs or sysadmins that have a strong privacy ethic. On the web sites that I maintain, I have a stated policy that we intend to challenge subpoenas for our web logs and user database. Of course, talk is cheap, and I'd hope to find funding for lawyers or pro-bono work. Then again, it's a likely possibility: When I got a subpoena, I found pro bono counsel (and excellent one too). I'll say what I expect to do. Partly to address some interesting issues about how witnesses may be compelled to travel long distances (beyond the usual countywide travel that noncyberspace cases typically involve). And partly to think aloud on my plans. As Declan says, "talk is cheap," so I may wimp-out, or think better of my plans, or get advice which changes my mind. But here goes: -- if and when I am called to testify in the Bell or Parker re-trials or re-re-trials, I expect to hire no damned shysters -- ditto for a subpoena...I'll try to read the subpoena and understand it as best I can and then comply with it as best I can. (Of course, _serving me_ is problematic. I had a process server make several trips out to my semi-rural hilltop home in 1995 before finally reaching me at home. And that was when I still answering the doorbell. These days I use my peephole, or a t.v. camera I sometimes have set up. I doubt a process server could get to me.) -- if the law is so confusing that I am expected to "retain counsel" to explain it to me, while his $400 an hour meter is running, then the law is an ass -- I was surprised to see so many "affidavits" and "interviews" and "pre-trial statements" from various witnesses in the Parker case. Surely these people must have known that though their presence could have been compelled in Washington state, that they had no obligation to sit down with Federal agents and give interviews! In a nutshell, this has been my plan for the past year or so (subject to modifications, as noted above): If subpoenaed, I'll expect them to provide _all_ transportation and lodging, in advance, in acceptable-quality hotels and with nice transportation. In advance. (I don't lend money to the government--see note below). I'll give no interviews prior to be seated in the witness box. While I can be compelled to testify in a courtroom, I find nothing in the Constitution which says I may be compelled to give pre-trial interviews. (From t.v. shows, I gather it is common for both sides to extensively interview witnesses, getting "depositions," etc. I figure it may be interesting to put this to a test: "Put me on the stand if you can. But you won't know what I'll say until then.") Oh, and no "swearing on a Bible," as I'm not a follower of He Whose Name May Not be Uttered, or whatever name they call their god by. If asked a question, I will take my time to consider my answer and then answer as simply as possible. If I believe the terms in the question are ambiguous, I will ask for them to be clarified. If I am jailed for contempt, for unacceptable reasons, then I expect to take appropriate actions against the kidnappers at a later time. (Note about expenses: I had heard during the Parker trial that various witnesses called to travel to Washington were to "submit travel expense receipts." Is this true? What part of the Constitution says citizens must lend money to the government and then petition to get some of it back later?) A bunch of my friends are involved in "pro se" court issues. While I hope to not waste valuable months of my life, as they have, coming up to speed on shyster jargon, I can't see the average lawyer picked out of a phone book knowing anything more about First and Fourth Amendment sorts of issues than I've picked up over the years. Most of the "court-appointed attorneys" seem to have been especially clueless in anything beyond pleading out a rapist. Anyway, I was not called to testify in the Parker case. In the latest Bell case, I don't know what will happen. --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Re: My plan to deal with subpoenas to testify
At 1:08 PM -0800 12/6/00, Tim May wrote: At 3:52 PM -0500 12/6/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: (Note about expenses: I had heard during the Parker trial that various witnesses called to travel to Washington were to "submit travel expense receipts." Is this true? What part of the Constitution says citizens must Yes. It's a standard government form. They also paid something like $25 a day while you waited outside the courtroom before being called to the stand, and $40 a day you actually testified. Yay. As I said, it's not my job to buy plane tickets, hotel rooms, etc. and then fill out a government form. Actually, I remember someone saying during the Parker case that a government travel office would make all travel and lodging arrangements. Not my job to lend money to the government. I'm watching a lawyer on the stand in the Seminole County part of the rolling trial say that he charges $500 an hour to testify in court cases. Sounds like a good fee for me to charge. I mis-spoke. He's not a lawyer...he's a statistics professor. Still, sounds like a good fee to charge for my "expert testimony" on Bell's scheme, should it come down to this. --Tim -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Bill Clinton belatedly decides that pot smoking should not becriminal
Gee, Bill, you're only about 6-8 years too late: --excerpt-- Wednesday December 6 10:15 PM ET Clinton: Pot Smoking Should Not Be Prison Offense LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - President Clinton (news - web sites), who tried to avoid the stigma of smoking marijuana by saying he never ''inhaled,'' tells Rolling Stone magazine that people should not be jailed for using or selling small amounts of the drug. --end excerpt-- Instead of pushing for legislation in '93-94, Clinton is now opining that all of those hundreds of thousands of folks his Drug Warriors put in in prison maybe shouldn't be there. Something tells me the New Bill will soon be bashing Carnivore, CALEA, Clipper, Echelon, and all other things Janet Reno, Louis Freeh, Jamie Gorelick, and all of the other Drug Warriors and Ninja Raiders were pushing so hard. We may even see the New Bill say he was never in favor of burning 90 people alive in Waco for the sin of believing in a bizarre variant of Christianity. Of course, he probably did the RS interview when he thought Bush was going to win and his party would be the Disloyal Opposition, railing against Carnivore, no knock raids, sentencing enhancements, the persecution of Jim Bill, CALEA, and so on. The New Bill may have to modify his new radicalism in light of the possibility that Algore and his ZOG Veep may manage, through the cleverness of their shysters, to pull a victory out of the ashes. Revised version, in the December 23 "Letters to the Editor": "Actually, I was misquoted in that "Rolling Stone" article. What I actually said was that Sen. Clinton and I are both behind President Gore's Campaign to Save the Children Act. If those who traffic in the Evil Weed think they can hide behind the Constitution, they'd better watch out for the pre-dawn raids!" --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Re: Jim Bell
At 1:19 AM -0500 11/28/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: The affidavit/complaint we link to at cluebot.com contains an allegation from the Feds that Bell only 'fessed up to (in previous interviews with l.e.) authoring the AP essays. I do not recall reading about, or writing about, Bell being charged with deploying a working AP system. No, they've been prosecuting him using far more mundane allegations of SSN misuse, stinkbombs, and stalking. AP just gives it all spice, I suppose. More than spice, I think. I think _this_ time they plan to make AP part of their case. As your own article said, "When the feds searched Bell's home earlier this month, according to a one-page attachment to the search warrant, agents were looking for "items which refer to Assassination Politics."" I won't engage in the kind of speculation about how they might build their case, but I think this is where they are going. Granted, they will not try to claim that Bell was running a real AP lottery. But they may make claims that he was planning an assassination. Some jurors might be swayed by the language in AP and by the (alleged) utterance: "Say goodnight, Joshua." (Wasn't Joshua the computer in "War Games"?) On Mon, Nov 27, 2000 at 11:46:14PM -0500, R. A. Hettinga wrote: At 7:45 PM -0800 on 11/27/00, Tim May wrote: (I think any of us could be called as witnesses to refute a state claim that he was deploying a real system!) Which, unfortunately, and IIRC, he actually *pled* to, nonetheless. Sheesh. No, I don't recall any such plea. Inasmuch as AP is some years off into the future, as even Bell would probably acknowledge (and may have acknowledged, if one dredges up all of his posts and looks at them carefully), I doubt he'd make a plea agreement that he had deployed a working AP system. I think AP was just hovering on the periphery in the first two rounds. This time they may try to make it a more central part of some case. Hence my comment that some of us may be called by the defense to explain why AP could not possibly be an operational system at this time. --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Needs killing
At 10:36 AM -0800 11/24/00, Ray Dillinger wrote: The "Needs Killing" verbiage you see here, I think, is mostly from people who, correctly or not, tend to think in terms either of there not being any governments, or in terms of the government being so ineffective that they are effectively in an ungoverned state. No, you're still not up on the past traffic on this list. Which makes having you be an _interpreter_ all the more strange. Saying "Gun grabbers need killing" is a statement about what is moral. It doesn't depend on whether government is effective or not, or whether it exists or not. --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Re: Public Key Infrastructure: An Artifact...
At 1:25 PM -0500 11/20/00, R. A. Hettinga wrote: At 12:10 PM -0500 on 11/20/00, Arnold G. Reinhold wrote: If CAs included a financial guarantee of whatever it is they are asserting when they issue a certificate, then all these problems would go away. Right. Like Ellison (and Metzger :-)) have said for years now, the only "assertions" worth making are financial ones. "Identity", biometric/meat, or otherwise, is only a proxy for asset protection anyway. I claim you can do this on the net without the current mystification of identity that exists in the financial system, using bearer asset cryptography, among other things, but that's another discussion altogether. And I have been asserting for years that _belief_ is all that matters. Or, more carefully put, that all issues of lawyers, backing by gold, financial instruments, escrow, bonds, etc. are issues of "How is belief affected?" One can think of many examples of where issues of identity, home address, name of lawyers, credit ratings, amount of a bond, etc. are really issues of belief in some outcome. One _believes_ that someone with a verifiable home and business address is more likely to be collected from (in a transaction or legal judgement) than someone with only a pseudonym. And one _believes_ that someone one has met is, for all intents and purposes, who he says he is (or, rather, that a key he represents to be his wills serve as adequate I.D. for future transactions.) A financial bond, or guarantee, is only one aspect of belief. Perhaps an important one, but only a subset. Belief is all. "All cryptography is about belief." --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Re: the ballot
At 7:19 PM +0100 11/14/00, Tom Vogt wrote: text in german, but I guess everyone will get the point... finally, we have a copy of the *real* official ballot... http://www.autsch.de/sdw_111300.html We've been seeing this joke every day since late last week. And, though it's undeniably funny, it grossly misrepresents the ballot issue. In fact, the "butterfly ballot" issue has been put on the back burner by the Democrat vermin. They are putting their efforts into re-sampling and re-counting and fiddling with the ballots in Volusia County, Broward County, Dade County, and Palm Beach County. The Democrat untermenchen are even trying to overrule the local canvassing boards which have said they "see no point" in a manual recount. (Broward County, for example, a heavily Democrat-infested county, only turned up 4 "found" votes for Gore in a laborious manual fiddling-with of the paper ballots. Hence the canvassing board voted to not expend more time and money fiddling with the entire county's ballots. The Democrat Gorehoppers are going to court to force them to.) The whole charade is delicious to watch. --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Re: Bush Florida lead dwindles toward zero...
At 5:08 AM -0500 11/12/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Bush actually lost votes, a very bad omen for him. Partially detached chads tend to come off during repeated runs through the tabulating machinery. This recount is occurring without a court order, it's provided for by Florida law. Vulis, you're the same commie fool you were a a couple of years ago. Your kind has earned liquidation. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Democrat FUD: If our lead does not mount, you must re-count!
At 2:43 PM -0500 11/11/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: On Sat, Nov 11, 2000 at 09:05:54AM -0800, Tim May wrote: Hilarious. Things are falling apart better and with more acrimony than I'd hoped. [...snip...] And so it goes, with recounts, judicial adjustments, do overs, and other such things requested in dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of counties. As much as I'd appreciate, purely from the perspective of continued amusement, this perpetual election to continue, I suspect it won't. At least some Dems are publicly telling Al to back down: http://www.perpetualelection.com/article.pl?sid=00/11/11/090229 If Al's stated litigiousness becomes perceived as a liability, we might see a kind of trip from Capitol Hill to the Naval Observatory to tell Al enough is enough. The irony is that one of the senators most tempermentally likely to do so is, of course, the Dem VP candidate. * Stage One of the FUD Campaign, Wednesday morning: "They found a whole box of ballots in an inner city, Democratic-leaning, pre-school! This will throw the election to Gore." (quickly turned out that this alleged ballot box contained stationery supplies) * Stage Two of the FUD Campaign, Wednesday evening: "Thousands of elderly Jewish voters were tricked by the confusing ballot into voting for Pat Buchanan." (turned out that, based on interviews, nearly every Jew in Palm Beach County claims to have accidentally voted for Buchanan, or double-voted. The numbers don't support this, and other counties had spoiled ballots, too. A Republican-leaning county in northern Florida had 22,000 spoiled ballots.) * Stage Three of the FUD Campaign, all day Thursday and continuing: "At least 20,000 ballots were spoiled because elderly Jewish Democrats got confused and tried to vote for Gore after discovering they accidentally voted for Buchanan. We demand a re-vote!" * Stage Four of the FUD Campaign, current: "We demand a manual recount. Two counts, the first one and then the state-mandated machine recount, are not enough. We are certain that if certain counties are counted again, and again, that the extra votes we need will be found." [As Jesse Jackson and Johnnie Cockroach might singsong: "If our lead does not mount, you must re-count!'] * Stage Five of the FUD Campaign, ongoing: "The whole Electoral Thing is a throwback to the whitemale patriarchy. What matters is the popular vote, the first one, before Bush temporarily took the lead by manipulating the recounts in New Mexico, Wisconsin, Iowa, and other states. The Peeples spoke on Tuesday night!" A lot of Democrats need to be dealt with when this is (temporarily) through. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: A successful lawsuit means Gore wins!
At 5:24 PM -0500 11/9/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Spooky Cypherpunk Niggar Tim May Moroned: #And, of course, Palm County will _not_ be given a #second chance to vote in this election. I guarantee it. It's either that or the choice you liked even less. Oh, I _like_ that other choice. Trust me. When I hear Jesse Jackson saying that unless the Palm Beach voters are given the chance to have a new vote there will be a race war, I rejoice. I was just reading in misc.survivalism that some folks in Florida are saying that if Al Gore and his Voters of Color succeed in twisting the courts into stealing the election, that white folks will start killing. Music to my ears. The fuse is burning on the powder keg. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Al Gore is only 630 votes away from winning the election
At 3:49 AM -0500 11/8/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: With 99.9 percent of the votes in Florida counted, Al Gore is only 630 votes away from winning the presidency. The Florida Department of State reports -- in numbers updated in the last five minutes -- that George W. Bush won 2,898,865 votes with Gore scoring 2,898,235. I'm watching Jesse Jackson on CNN, saying he and others (Al Sharpton, etc.) will be rallying to investigate "irregularities" in Florida. They plan marches. Both sides are now scrambling to find the extra votes they need. I wouldn't be at all surprised if both sides don't turn up "undiscovered" votes. Or if both sides don't sue to invalidate entire blocs of votes (from certain precincts). The longer the recount goes on, the more suspect the final tally, ironically enough. The one good thing out of this circus is that neither party will have the "mandate" to push for lots of new laws. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Courts interfering with election
At 4:18 PM -0800 11/7/00, Tim May wrote: I thought I was jaded, but this is too much even for me to believe. A judge in St. Louis has ordered the polls kept open later, until 10 pm local time. The effect will be to let more inner city, Democrat-leaning voters vote. The rural and suburban polling places will close at the normal times. Whew. Democrats are elated that more of their supporters will be able to vote in the extra hours. A similar measure was turned down in another state (Kansas?). Democrats in other urban areas are hustling to see if they can get their own bought judges involved in the process. A stunning theft of the election. If these "late Democrats" turn out to be the margin of victory, this will energize the anger of the Republicans. I just had a Cypherpunks numbskull (who was also actively on the wrong side in the Elian debate) send me private mail asking why I would object to this. His exact words were: "It's hard to imagine that someone quite disgusted with our pseudo-democratic government will argue against ensuring that everyone has a chance to vote ..." Sometimes I despair. We may need to make a list of the Cypherpunks idiots here and "mark them for deletion" during the next GC. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
RE: Courts interfering with election
Ernest Hua has asked me to call him a numbskull directly. Apparently he did not like my "someone" reference. So I am obliging. And he says he will not send me anything he doesn't mind having shared with the rest of the list. And in a later message he defended the St. Louis legal action by saying "The new rules do not say "Republicans not allowed during those two hours". His message follows: At 5:44 PM -0800 11/7/00, Ernest Hua wrote: Look, if you want to call me a "numbskull" feel free to do that to me directly. And, I will surely not send you something I am not willing to share with the rest of the list. You aren't that special. Ern Retardation is a dangerous thing. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Courts interfering with election
At 8:35 PM -0500 11/7/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: TimMay wrote: #I thought I was jaded, but this is too much even for me to believe. # #A judge in St. Louis has ordered the polls kept open later, until 10 #pm local time. The effect will be to let more inner city, #Democrat-leaning voters vote. What a lame-ass complaint. For some reason, certain polling areas got jammed up, as in long lines. The court agreed to keep the polls open longer so the people could vote. It didn't matter who the people might vote for, despite the Democrats asking for the extended hours. Yes, the Democrats pushed for this. In other states, the unions gave their members the day off. At least this is the established way to buy votes. Having the courts extend the hours so that more inner city mutants can stagger down to the polls is inexcusable. The Republicans actually went into federal court to try and block this, and failed. And it would serve the Democretins right if an appeals court ultimately reverses the decision to extend the polling hours and throws out _all_ of the tainted votes. Did you expect a Republican judge to say no since the people who might be unable to vote by the normal deadline were Democrats? I expect "The polling hours are 7 a.m. to 8 p.m." to be upheld. People arrange their schedules accordingly. If they work hours such that they cannot be at the polling places during these hours, they obtain absentee ballots. Or they take personal time off of work. Or they go in an hour later. Etc. What's your objection to people voting? Try not to mention a political party in your reply. No, my objection is a change in the rules at the 11th hour, instigated by one party. I would be just as incensed if Palm Springs and West Palm Beach had changes made to their voting situations as a result of Republican legal actions a few hours before the polls were to close. As to your insults lobbed at me, _you're_ the one hiding behind a nym. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Courts interfering with election
At 8:52 PM -0500 11/7/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: TimMay was entirely silent on why he objects to this time extension. You lying sack of shit. I've made my objections very, very clear. I need to find out who you are and where you live. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Courts interfering with election
At 9:14 PM -0500 11/7/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: commerce wrote home.com # The obvious complaint is that only select polling areas were #given extended hours, when it would have been just as easy to #extend voting hours for the entire region If all polling places had their hours extended, does TimMay withdraw his objections? No, though this would be a good first step. The obvious issue is that those in the suburbs were more careful to schedule their voting period to match the preannounced poll hours. The "get out the vote" last-minute calls to the welfare chiselers, the addicts, the crack hoes, etc., produced a last-minute surge. I say fuck them and fuck any court officers who pull off this last-minute vote grab. "In a last-minute development, polling places in Newport Beach, La Jolla, and Pebble Beach will remain open for two additional hours, following legal calls by the California Republican Party. Democrats are furious, and are demanding that polling places in Watts, South-Central LA, and Oakland be kept open _three_ additional hours." Rules are rules. People should plan according to those rules. Last-minute surges as precinct captainst call on their troops should not be rewarded by keeping the polls open longer. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Courts interfering with election
At 9:34 PM -0500 11/7/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well, let's see if there's a perfectly valid reason for the extension: http://www.foxnews.com/election_night/states/mo/hours.sml #Mahina Nightsage, 41, said she attempted to vote at 10 a.m. but #was told by an election judge that she was not registered for #that polling place. Nightsage said she arrived at the board's #downtown office by 12:30 and by 3:15 p.m. had not yet been able #to vote. Ah, yes, so we extend the hours in a liberal welfare mecca because Latisha Shabombaweka wasn't properly registered at 10 IN THE MORNING. Yeah, makes sense to me, in a liberal kind of way. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Courts interfering with election
Late news: Just saw Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri calling for an investigation into "criminal voting fraud" by the Democrat political machine in St. Louis and the lower court judge (if he was appointed by Democrats, the jig's up). Ashcroft faces a very, very, very close election, and that extra blast of welfare roll voters may have been enough to defeat him. Mighty niggardly of the Democrats, I'd say. Spooky, in fact. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Democrat Delay Elects Dead Man
At 11:17 PM -0500 11/7/00, R. A. Hettinga wrote: At 7:46 PM -0800 on 11/7/00, Tim May wrote: (if he was appointed by Democrats, the jig's up) He was Gebhart's former chief of staff... :-). It looks like the extra 3 hours did the job in the Democrat-heavy precincts. The dead man, Mel Carnahan, has narrowly edged-out John Ashcroft. By the way, none of the news services I can find are reporting the "overturning" of this extension some have reported here...anyone have solid dope on this heavily-doped race? I know the Democrat criminal Richard Daley rigged it so that dead people would vote for the criminal JFK (terminated with extreme prejudice a few years later), but now we have the spectacle of Democrat criminals keeping the voting booths longer in Democrat zones so that a dead man could _win_. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Applying California law to ICANN
At 12:15 PM -0800 11/5/00, jim bell wrote: Other entities, like churches for example, exist within California but aren't especially controlled by California law. ICANN probably "needs" no greater regulation than a church does: The building it's in will probably follow California building codes, and the people who work there will pay US and California taxes. But other than this, it is unclear why ICANN should even be controllable by California law? If companies and even health clubs are subjected to Calfornia's various laws about discrimination, hate crimes, and other political correctness issues, why would ICANN, a California corporation _not_ be subject to these various rules and regulations? (By including "health clubs," I don't mean building code or health regulations. I mean things like the law banning gyms from discriminating against women, though women-only clubs are still legal. The chick lawyers got this exemption put into law...something about "providing protected spaces for womyn." Many other examples abound of California law being used as an instrument of majoritarian herd rule politics.) It may well be that political activists discover this whole ICANN thing and realize they have a golden opportunity to have California laws applied to black/delist sites they dislike, organizations they think are racist, etc. The Southern Law Poverty Center, the Simon Wiesenthal Hate Center, and other ZOG-controlled commie organizations will likely be going into overtime. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
The Market for Privacy
At 11:41 AM -0500 11/1/00, Declan McCullagh wrote:
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,39895,00.html
Privacy Firm Tries New Gambit
by Declan McCullagh ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
2:00 a.m. Nov. 1, 2000 PST
WASHINGTON -- Zero Knowledge Systems seems to have finally realized a
harsh truth: Internet users don't like to pay extra to protect their
privacy.
This is a recurring theme, and one we've talked about many times.
Fact is, most people don't think they need security. Most people
don't even think they need backups. Until their hard disk crashes.
And so on. It's a tough sell in either case.
This is why the market for crypto and security and anonymity has
tended to be at the "margins" of society: porn, warez, freedom
fighting, etc. Such has it always been, such shall it always be.
Targetting the mainstream is a tough sell.
(The most widely-deployed bits of crypto are in places where huge
deals were cut with browser makers, e.g., SSL, Verisign, etc. The
customer is only vaguely aware that such things are happening. No
sale to Joe Average is needed. Probably this is the way Web proxies
will ultimately be sold.)
ZKS was just one of many companies attempting to sell privacy tools
to "Joe Average," and his little daughter Suzy Average (pictured in
ZKS Freedom ads...). Well, Joe doesn't do much with his home computer
except check some sites and maybe download a few porn images from
Danni's Hotbox when Suzy has gone to bed and the wife is passed out
on the sofa.
_Could_ ZKS Freedom help Joe a little? Maybe, but it's not something
even on his radar screen to worry about. His bigger concern is having
Suzy or the wifey find the paltry pieces of porn he purloined.
Or he's at work and his boss has just announced that several
employees have been fired for using the company's networks for
checking sports scores, downloading porn, usng Napster, etc.
These are Joe Average's _real_ concerns about privacy. Cute ads about
little girls needing their privacy probably won't sell ZKS Freedom to
Joe Average.
ZKS may do better by bundling Freedom with Danni's Hard Drive
accounts! "Your porn is downloaded to you in "Plain Brown Wrapper"
format, disguised to look like a marketing report containing the key
words you specify. Your boss will think it's business, your wife will
be bored."
(No, I'm not suggesting this as any kind of real product. The market
is just too small, and downloading porn or Napster songs at work is a
lose for many good reasons. The proper solution is even more
straightforward: only fools download porn at company sites, and they
deserve to be fired. And if Joe Average doesn't have his own
_personal_ computer at home, they're cheap enough. No reason Little
Suzy should be doing her homework on the machine he has his porn on.
And even if he does, encrypted partitions are trivial to set up.
Plus, removable CD-RWs and Zips. "Zip--for when you don't want your
porn discovered by your wife!")
The second major use for privacy tools is preventing the "dossier
society" effect, where one's words in alt.sex.gerbils are archived
for all time and are seen by prospective employers, Senate
confirmation panels, etc. This is a likely market for ZKS Freedom.
Ah, except that utterly free and easy to use services like MyDeja and
MyYahoo and suchlike are dominant in this application area ("space").
It is routine to see "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" posts in nearly all
newsgroups. While these are not cryptographically robust, it's
unlikely these will ever be linked to true names. Especially as they
may be set up on the fly, through proxies, etc.
Still, some fraction of people will pay for Freedom-type nyms.
Probably not $50 a year, as that is a significant fraction of their
entire ISP bill. But not a lot of people. And they won't pay much.
The real market for robust security and privacy tools is, as always, elsewhere.
The _interesting_ market has always been for those who
are--demonstrably!--willing to pay big bucks to get on a plane to fly
to the Cayman Islands or Luxembourg to open an offshore account. For
those who are actively interested in untraceable VISA cards. For
those selling arms. For those trafficking in illegal thoughts.
In short, for crypto anarchy.
Not for fluff.
Will the new ZKS business model work? Maybe. But as Simson Garfinkel
points out in the article Declan wrote, this may take years to
develop. Until then, tough sledding.
MojoNation seems to be a lower burn-rate run at the real low hanging fruit.
--Tim May
--
-:-:-:-:-:-:-:
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
"Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Zero Knowledge changes business model (press release)
At 10:03 AM -0500 10/31/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: ZERO-KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS INTRODUCES MANAGED PRIVACY SERVICES TO SOLVE THE PRIVACY CHALLENGES OF BUSINESSES Montreal -- October 31, 2000 -- Zero-Knowledge(R) Systems, the leading developer of privacy solutions, today introduced its new Managed Privacy Services(TM) offering to solve the privacy challenges of businesses and enable enterprise to thrive in a privacy-conscious climate. Delivering a unique combination of technology, policy and strategy expertise, Zero-Knowledge Managed Privacy Services (MPS) enables clients to turn privacy into a competitive advantage by leveraging rich data resources while building stronger and more profitable relationships with customers, employees and partners. MPS is based on responsible and ethical information management in accordance with relevant legislation and industry standards. "Relevant legislation"? In Canada, in Iran, in Denmark, where? Surely ZKS is not claiming that they will be somehow targetting each instance of their product to specific countries. If not, if the product is a general one, then just _whose_ "relevant legislation" applies? (I presume this is related to their split key/key escrow/"trusted third parties" nonsense.) * ASSESS AND ADVISE -- Managed Privacy Services begins with a thorough assessment of each client's data storage and usage patterns, as well as their business objectives. From this assessment, recommendations are made regarding areas where data can be better utilized through the addition of a strong privacy layer, and areas of potential privacy risk are identified. This is beginning to sound like ZKS is restructuring itself as a consulting company, a la Arthur Anderson or the (now in the process of divorce) Kroll-O'Gara outfit. Zero-Knowledge is committed to deploying systems that are transparent and accountable. In keeping with this policy, MPS will incorporate third party verification and split encryption key structures Split encryption key. I think that says it all. , as well as provide consumers with access to white papers, independent auditors' reports or other materials that assure a company is doing what it claims. With MPS Zero-Knowledge strengthens its commitment to building responsible systems that empower consumers to control the disclosure and use of their personal information, while still enabling businesses to thrive in a data and relationship-driven marketplace. "Empower consumers"? "Responsible systems"? "Strengthens its commitment"? How about: -- no key escrow, no split keys, no trusted third parties -- public key crypto With strong crypto widely available, what business (or knowledgeable private person) is going to want or need this "ASSESS AND ADVISE" and "COMMIT AND CAPITULATE" (ok, I'm changing their stages) stuff/ I can't see how a large company, like an Intel or an Amgen, is going to move away from mathematically robust PKS systems and adopt some throwback to the 1940s, some kind of split key or key escrow system. And I can't see how Joe Consumer is going to pay for the (apparent) "review" of his (presumed) needs and then get some key escrow package tailored to his (presumed) needs. So, what sort of customer is this product tailored for? Some middle-sized company which is clueless on crypto and which wants hand-holding? Some company in a country which _requires_ key escrow? Is ZKS setting itself up to be the premier supplier of key escrow and LEAF tools? Sounds like it. The "relevant legislation" language is the real kicker. Sounds like the many former government types working at ZKS got the focus shifted from truly secure systems to basically uninteresting--and even pernicious!--systems which "meet the legitimate needs of law enforcement." Key escrow, in other words. "Big Brother Inside" Whew. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Zero Knowledge changes business model to Split KeyEscrow(NSA-Key (press release)
At 12:27 PM -0500 10/31/00, Adam Shostack wrote: On Tue, Oct 31, 2000 at 04:07:18PM +0100, cyphrpnk wrote: | Privacy is good business. Companies in every industry are | realizing they must institute the proper privacy policies, | practices and infrastructures in order to succeed in | today's digital economy. Zero-Knowledge Managed Privacy | Services provides the tools and strategies that enable | business to establish private customer relationships and | earn consumer trust while ensuring legislative compliance | and mitigating risk. | legistlative Compliance... | Guess Lew Giles or the CSE came to visit By legislative compliance, we mean compliance with laws. There are no key escrow laws in Canada. There is a privacy law, bill C-6, and we will help companies comply with that. Let's look at the key splitting aspect. Alice has some secrets she wishes to protect with your product. Or Alice is communicating with Bob and wishes the contents kept secret. Standard stuff. Of course, she could just use conventional PKS tools. Or even Freedom, should she wish the fact of the communication itself to be protected. Standard stuff. But let us say she, for whatever reason, uses key splitting. Charles and Debby are the holders of the split keys. (If either Alice or Bob is the holder of one of the split keys, this is as if the key is not split at all, of course. Modulo some slight work factor issues.) "Ensuring legislative compliance" now talks on a meaning which is completely separate from whether key escrow laws have been passed. Charles and Debby can be suboenaed (not sure what the Canadian, or Iranian, or Baloneystan equivalents are). This subpoena may be in secret, unknown to Alice. Or Alice and Bob. And this process may not happen with just subpoenas. It will likely happen with national security agencies. Without Alice knowing. This is what happens when Alice or any other customer of your product uses "trusted third parties." GAK beats crack any day. This is the danger of building a "trusted third parties" system. And is precisely the reason the United Kingdom was campaigning for this kind of system. By building precisely the tools they and other governments would need to implement such a system, you are making such a system more likely to happen. --Tim May --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Zero Knowledge changes business model (press release)
e phone, or online. And she should not reveal her AIDS diagnosis by buying AIDS drugs at her local pharmacy. And she should not be ordering books on bomb-making and terrorism through Amazon. However, once Alice has given Bob this damaging information, the jig is up. Bob knows her passwords or her AIDS status or her preferences in books, whatever. And Charles may know other things. And Dave still other things. Now, can any protocol stop Bob and Charles and Dave from pooling their information they each have collected on Alice? Nope. The point is to unlink Alice's identity with the items she purchases, the medicines she needs, the books she buys. Which is why remailers, digital cash, proxies, and suchlike are interesting. Perhaps ZKS is planning to unveil robust versions of all of these things. If so, I applaud them. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Insurance: My Last Post
At 3:36 PM -0400 10/25/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: It must have something to do with being Canadianized. Only folks from Alberta seem to get it right. Not counting a certain someone, initials SB/SS, from British Columbia? --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Gort in granny-shades (was Re: Al Gore goes cypherpunk?)
At 10:14 AM -0400 10/24/00, R. A. Hettinga wrote: http://www.rollingstone.com/sections/magazine/text/excerpt.asp?afl=rsnlngFeatureID=120lngStyleID At 2:08 AM -0400 on 10/24/00, Declan McCullagh wrote that Albert, "Gort" Gore, Jr., (a robot who would destroy the world to save it :-)) told the Rolling Stone: I loved The Matrix. Innumeracy is as innumeracy does, I guess. And, unlike another, and equally fictional, moron with a better clue about how the world works, "Gort's" liking the Keanu Reeves neo-Platonist adolescent-hacker power fantasy The Matrix is paradoxically, but utterly, consistent with his currently-closet Luddist Socialism. No accounting for taste, of course, but I _loved_ "The Matrix." I'll leave it to others to decide whether I'm innumerate or not, whether I'm a luddite or not, and so on. Overall, it's up there in my Top 5 of SF films, with "2001," "Terminator 2," and "Blade Runner." Not necessarily in that order. Ihre Meilenzahl variiert vielleicht. For some reason, the very cartoon physics which made it popular was the main thing which bugged me most about The Matrix, as it does in a lot of other movies these days. Given that the characters were clearly described as being in a VR, and given that they "learned" to use the new rules they could access, the "cartoon physics" was very consistently done. As a physicist, I had no problems with it. So, ultimately, I suspect that the real reason that the libertarians and crypto-anarchists I like to hang out with on the net rave about The Matrix so much is because Neo gets to blow away so many cops, and in such exquisite detail. Quake with better graphics. And, like Quake, what would normally be considered murder in the "real" world doesn't "matter" so much, because the cops are not "real", not actual human beings. They're just software. Then count _this_ crypto anarchist as a counterexample to your point. Maybe, frankly, that's also why Albert, "Gort", Gore, Jr., a died-in-the-hairshirt man-the-barracades Mailerian Crypto-Communist disguised in a blue suit, white shirt, red tie, and, more recently, a Ronald Reagan pomade -- when he's not disguised as a earth-toned plaid-shirted pseudo-Gomer, or something else -- liked The Matrix so much. M In the meantime, the Matrix's supposedly masterful special effects, its apparent main attraction, were, for the most part, pedestrian, and could have been found in any music video -- or even commercial -- of the time. Actually, not so. The so-called "bullet time" effects hit the ads about the same time as "Teh Matrix" only because the tools and methods spread to the ad business faster than the film could be finished and distributed; in many cases, the same folks were taking what they'd learned and applying it to television. In any case, the proof is in the pudding. I certainly thought the effects were far from pedestrian. As to your not liking "The Matrix," fair enough. But using it as some kind of touchstone for everything that is bad in modern America is a bit of a reach. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: why should it be trusted?
At 11:36 PM -0700 10/22/00, Nathan Saper wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Sun, Oct 22, 2000 at 10:59:51PM -0700, petro wrote: the health and well-being of its population. That is the purpose of the government. Not in the United States of America it isn't. Then what is the purpose of our government? Not mob rule, not democracy. Go back and read the books you apparently skipped over in the 10th or 11th grade. The Constitution exists largely to circumscribe the powers of government and to head off precisely the kind of "50% plus 1" mobocracy you have consistently been advocating. In case this just doesn't make sense to you, read the Bill of Rights several times and reflect on what the various elements actually mean. Think about this when next you advocate using the democratic vote to seize private property by majoritarian rule. Frankly, I think I've read enough of you, Nathan Saper. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: why should it be trusted?
At 1:10 AM -0400 10/23/00, Dave Emery wrote: Nobody dies without healthcare under our present system. Actually, many people do. What planet have you been living on? (I'm not arguing for "universal health care," or "socialized medicine," or Nathan Saper's "soak the giant corporations" scheme. I'm just disputing the point above, which is patently false.) Many do not have insurance, and do not receive care for various ailments until it's too late. Many do not have insurance and do not have annual physicals, or mammograms, or prostate exams, or pap smears, or any of the hundreds of such things. Some hospitals offers limited free services, some free clinics exist. But clearly many Americans are not receiving such care. And of course these "free services" are often a huge distance from _good_ healthcare. So much for "nobody dies without healthcare." Sadly, at least for those of extreme libertarian bent that make up the choir on this list, our society has chosen to pass laws that require hospitals and to some degree other medical treatment facilities to treat patients who cannot pay - mostly at their expense. ANYONE with a life threatening or even just very serious medical condition can walk into most any emergency room and get full medical treatment by law even if there is no insurance and no money to pay. This is not true. Again, I have to question your connection to current events. Surely you have heard of folks being turned away at emergency room entrances and shipped off to the "public hospital"? There are many cases in many cities where people died in ambulances that had been turned away at the _nearest_ (or _better_) hospital and sent off on a 30-minute ambulance or taxicab ride to the "public" hospital in town. Again, I am not advocating that medicine be socialized or that hospitals be forced to treat those they choose not to treat. (Were it my hospital, I would not think highly of Men with Guns telling me I must give $10,000 worth of ER services to someone who won't pay me back and who has no insurance.) Of course, in the libertarian ideal universe someone not completely indigent who had a genetic condition that made them high risk might still be unable to get any kind of catastropic medical insurance and might be wiped out of virtually all assets by a serious illness, even one completely unrelated in any way to his genetic predisposition. Yes...so? --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: CDR: Re: Nuclear waste
At 9:02 PM -0700 10/21/00, petro wrote: May: 5. Not that this is necessarily the best option. The domes in deep caves are perfectly fine. And there is much to be said for the Pournelle/Hogan solution: put the vitreous beads in concrete-filled drums, load them onto pallets, then park the pallets in neat rows and columns in the center of a 10 km by 10 km fenced area in the Mojave Desert of California. Very little rain (geological records and fossil lakes show this); certainly no significant flash flooding. Then erect signs, in many languages, and with skull-and-crossbones, saying: "This area is poisoned." Even the most bizarre devolution-to-savagery scenarios are unlikely to have wandering savages in the waterless Mojave trying to scavenge stuff out of sealed drums marked with skulls and crossbones! I've never really understood why we don't just put this stuff in some *really* tough polycarbonate containers aboard "mature" technology rockets and launch it into the biggest heat source in the solar system. I realize that there is a lot of it, but still. This is a very old idea, rejected for good cause many, many years ago. Need I elaborate? --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: why should it be trusted?
At 12:25 PM -0700 10/19/00, David Honig wrote: At 05:48 PM 10/18/00 -0700, Nathan Saper wrote: So are you saying that there is nothing wrong with the government doing the corporations' dirty work? A govt has an obligation to secure the data it has collected and not to share it. So perhaps we agree on this point: the govt must not give out (do 'dirty work') data on citizens that it holds. If an insurance (or bank or grocery or whatever) co. wants data, they can't expect it from the govt. [Hmm... I hadn't thought about the morality of terraserver.. where you can get pictures of your neighbors lots, taken by the govt] This issue has been discussed recently, in some newspaper articles. (Don't have a URL, as I was reading it casually, elsewhere.) It turned out that the government high-res photos were ideal for burglars to use to case properties for break-ins, to identify unsecured property in backyards, etc. And it's not a function of government to snoop like this, the Supreme Court's rulings notwithstanding. Ironically, when private actors do things like this, one can count on various government types to rush in with denunciations and lawsuits. Sort of the way the government cracks down on polluting vehicles while school districts and public bus agencies run the worst-polluting vehicles. Or the pension plans which Congress exempts itself from. Government always cracks own on others and exempts itself. Nothing surprising. We just shouldn't let it happen. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Re: why should it be trusted?
At 11:06 PM -0500 10/17/00, Neil Johnson wrote: Yes, I can see it now. "I'm sorry I have to tell you this Mr. Mrs. May, but the genetic tests required by your insurance company have revealed that your unborn child has a 65% chance of developing an expensive to treat and possibly severely debilitating condition requiring many operations, doctor visits, therapy, special equipment, round the clock nursing. etc. Since we have already passed this information on to your insurance company as required by the terms of your policy, they are recommending and will pay you to terminate the pregnancy and to have both you and your husband sterilized. Otherwise they will not pay for your pre-natal care, the delivery, or any future treatment of your child. Of course you can opt for our "High Genetic Risk Policy" at $X thousands of dollars a month (which is probably equal to or more expensive than the cost of paying for the possible medical costs on your own IF the condition occurs. Which you would, since Medicare/Medicaid was ended in the last round of "Compassionate Conservatism"). And what is wrong with this? Nothing that I can see. Alice the Insurer is free to set her rates as she wishes, and even to require tests. Bob the Prospective Insured is free to shop elsewhere. What has drawn so many of you socialist creeps to this list in the past few months? Did "Mother Jones" give out subscription information recently? Wait until you finally grasp the full implications of crypto anarchy. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: why should it be trusted?
At 10:20 PM -0500 10/17/00, Allen Ethridge wrote: On Tuesday, October 17, 2000, at 08:19 PM, Tim May wrote: As for insurance companies "discriminating," this is what I hope for. Those of us who don't engage in certain practices--smoking, sky diving, anal sex, whatever--should not be subsidizing those who do. This is the beauty of "opt out" plans. Yes, only the genetically pure deserve health care. And you are sure that the insurance companies won't opt you out when they get a good look at your DNA? Insurers are bettors. They weigh all available information and then set a premium based on their expectations. Even those with "bad genes" can get insurance...they just have to pay more. Sounds fair to me. More to the point, "opt out" means that a person, call her Alice, can arrange for her own tests, done privately. For diseases to which she is not susceptable, she can "opt out." If she has vanishingly small expectation of contracting AIDS, for example, she can opt out. In an uncoerced society, yow else could it be. But the first order of business is for you to support your claim that DNA is collected by the police and then shared with insurance companies. Actually, that's your claim. Stop your lying. I was responding to the point made earlier that DNA is being collected by the police and is shared with insurers. But I'm surprised that you'er so ignorant of cooperation between government and corporations. Maybe you don't actually work for a living. You are aware of drug testing in the work place, aren't you? Those who won't piss in a jar don't have to work for Megatronic Corporation. Employment is not a "right." And none of _my_ employees are drug tested. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: I created the Al Gore created the Internet story
At 5:12 PM -0400 10/18/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: At 12:22 10/18/2000 -0700, jim bell wrote: I ask this, what I believe would be an excellent idea for an article: Why didn't the Internet develop even faster than it actually did? 9600 bps modems existed in 1986, not all that far in performance behind 28Kbps units. By 1986, numerous clones of the IBM PC and AT existed. Internet deployment happened at a near-doubling every year starting around 1993, coincident with the deployment of the web. Most computers in 1986 weren't up to it. Many of us were using Apple II computers with something like 278x192 resolution (in single hi res mode). Imagine such a beast doing networking. Ick. To Bell's point, by 1986 many people _were_ on the Internet. Modems were typically 1200. 2400-baud modems were available. 9600s may have existed (Racal-Vadic, others), but they were too expensive for casual use. My first ISP was (according to him) the first ISP to offer accounts to "civilians" (non-academic, non-company-paid, non-governmental). This was Portal Communications, out of Cupertino, CA. I got my account in '88 or so. A Mac Plus with a 1200 baud modem, replaced a year later with a Mac IIci and a 2400 baud modem. And so on. BTW, my little Mac Plus had more than adequate screen resolution to handle my mail program (pine), newsreader (tin), and misc. word processors, outline processors, and suchlike. (As a side note, John Little shut down his ISP service in the early 90s, due to obvious competition from Netcom and others. He re-started the company as a billing company...and his stake in Portal Software is into the billions of dollars, modulo the recent fall in prices of stocks. PRSF is the symbol.) Usenet and mailing lists were usable by the cognoscenti from the mid-80s up to the "modern age." Using gopher and Archie and anonymous ftp was for the cognoscenti only, though. Not much fun for ordinary folks. This obviously all changed around 1994, with Mosaic/Netscape. "Point and click" cleared the way. The illusion of "going to" a site (URLs) did the trick. Faster computers weren't important, in my view. Better screens were only slightly important. Modem speeds were more important. Ironically, I was using a 28.8K modem by around 1992. A big improvement over my 9600 modem. I say "ironically" because 28.8K is what I am now connecting at! Though I have a 56K modem, I cannot reliably connect at much better than 28.8, sometimes 33.3. (I live in a rural area. Can't get a cable modem because I don't have, or want, cable. Can't get DSL because I'm too far from the CO. This may change in a year or so. Don't want to spend $700/mo for a Tachyon rig. Satellite systems may be coming (Gideon, DirecTV), but are not here yet.) Friends of mine have DSL, cable modems, even their own T1s. Is there output any higher than mine? Mostly they just get pages loading in an instant, instead of the seconds or so it takes me to load a page. For actual reading of what's on a page, they have no speed advantages. 28.8 is still faster than people can read, typically. This is where I've been, mostly happily, for several years. My output on mailing lists and to newsgroups has not been insignificant. And I happily use Google, Deja, IMDB, and a hundred other sites. I even send and receive images. About all I cannot plausibly do is download movies, or hundreds of Napster songs, or host Web pages locally. No skin off my nose. The point: I get along fine at 28.8. The modern Web *experience* is what has changed dramatically, not modem speeds and screen resolutions. The very growth of the Web is what fed it. Prior to browsers and URLs, the Net just wasn't as interesting, and it was limited to the aforementioned cognoscenti. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Re: why should it be trusted?
At 6:01 PM -0700 10/18/00, Nathan Saper wrote: And what is wrong with this? Nothing that I can see. Alice the Insurer is free to set her rates as she wishes, and even to require tests. Bob the Prospective Insured is free to shop elsewhere. Where elsewhere? What alternative does Bob have? If it is cheaper for companies to not insure him, they won't. And then we have a public health crises. "What if nobody will sell Bob the food he wants for the price he is willing or able to pay? Then he'll starve to death!" Bob is seeking to pay less money in insurance premiums that he expects to receive in benefits. Insurers are seeking to get Bob to pay more in premiums than they pay out in benefits. Insurance is gambling. Get it through your thick skull. What has drawn so many of you socialist creeps to this list in the past few months? Did "Mother Jones" give out subscription information recently? I came because I'm interested in (though admittedly naieve about) cryptography, and I like debating with people who hold different opinions than I do. Sadly, you don't know enough to actually carry on a debate. Warmed-over socialist platitudes have been your stock in trade. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: why should it be trusted?
At 5:48 PM -0700 10/18/00, Nathan Saper wrote: On Wed, Oct 18, 2000 at 09:10:27AM -0700, David Honig wrote: Discrimination in the good sense, like discriminating dangerous vs. safe. What do you think insurance companies *should* do, if not make various discriminations about risk? Are you against car insurers asking about your other genetic characteristics (e.g., sex)? No, because they do not deny coverage based upon gender. They can (and, in many cases, do) deny coverage based on larger-than-average chances of contracting heart disease, for example. Insurance rates are established according to many criteria. In many cases, higher-risk customers are sold insurance, but at higher rates. In some cases, they are denied insurance. (As when the costs are open-ended...) In any case, whether Alice sells insurance to Bob is not a matter for the state to interfere with. You, Nathan, may set up your own insurance company if you wish. Or you may offer to pay for the health care of those you think are not getting a fair deal. But you may NOT tell me I must sell insurance if I choose not to. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Re: why should it be trusted?
At 6:54 PM -0700 10/18/00, Yardena Arar + Christian Goetze wrote: I almost never participate in this group, but here it's hard to resist. On Wed, 18 Oct 2000, Tim May wrote: At 6:01 PM -0700 10/18/00, Nathan Saper wrote: And what is wrong with this? Nothing that I can see. Alice the Insurer is free to set her rates as she wishes, and even to require tests. Bob the Prospective Insured is free to shop elsewhere. Where elsewhere? What alternative does Bob have? If it is cheaper for companies to not insure him, they won't. And then we have a public health crises. "What if nobody will sell Bob the food he wants for the price he is willing or able to pay? Then he'll starve to death!" Bob is seeking to pay less money in insurance premiums that he expects to receive in benefits. Insurers are seeking to get Bob to pay more in premiums than they pay out in benefits. Insurance is gambling. Get it through your thick skull. It's no longer gambling if the insurances get to see through the back of the cards. I think this is what the objection is about. Gambling is about assessing risk and rewards and payoffs. A person seeking insurance knows things about his or her health that the prospective insurer may not know about. Likewise, the prospective insurer may come to know things about the candidate. This is the way markets in general have always worked. Economists talk about "preference revealing" and "selective disclosure of information." In this context, if either side wishes to reveal less than required by the other side, it can walk away from the deal. I can see why you have tended to not participate in this group. Keep it that way. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Insurance (was: why should it be trusted?)
At 9:11 PM -0500 10/18/00, Neil Johnson wrote: Two Things: 1. It sounds like to me that there is no room for human compassion in crypto-anarchy. (Seems like we will all end up sitting in our "compounds" armed to the teeth and if anybody comes along we either blow'em to bits or pay them anonymous digital cash to go away). Another socialist simp-wimp heard from. Lots of socialists to be dealt with and disposed of. I wonder who will stoke the furnaces? --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Re: Re: why should it be trusted?
At 9:20 PM -0500 10/18/00, Neil Johnson wrote: --- Original Message - From: "Tim May" [EMAIL PROTECTED] This is the way markets in general have always worked. Economists talk about "preference revealing" and "selective disclosure of information." But the Bob has no control of his risk (genetics), or at least not yet :). The insurance company does. The insurance company does NOT have any control over Bob's risks! Whatever gave you that idea? All the insurance company can do is to estimate the risks and costs of treatment as best they can and then make Bob an offer on how much they will charge to promise to treat him if and when he gets sick or is injured. I am unable to find any gentler way to say this: a lot of you (Neil, Yardena, Nathan, Robert, etc.) are woefully ignorant of economics, markets, and the nature of a free society. In this insurance debate, several of you seem to think that Bob has some "right" to insurance...at the price _he_ or some committee thinks is "fair." Please read up on some basic economics--preferably not Marxist economics. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: why should it be trusted?
Ls and gate arrays. Have fun. Near realtime cracking. Sure. Whatever. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: A helpful ruling on anonymity
At 10:24 AM -0700 10/17/00, Ray Dillinger wrote: Basically, whether it's math or crypto, there are some ideas that people just aren't going to "get" because they always lump unfamiliar things together if those things violate the same assumption. In math, they used to look at me blankly when I explained that there was more than one kind of infinity -- Or about transfinite numbers that *weren't* an infinity -- because they only know finite mathematics. Anything outside that realm is, well, infinity, and one infinity, as far as the sheeple are concerned, is as good as another. Likewise, people who only understand speech and business mediated by absolute identities are going to have trouble with the "subtle" difference between anonymity and pseudonymity. It's a model where you are dealing with someone but don't know who they are, and as far as the sheeple are concerned, one not-knowing is as good as another. It violates the same assumption, therefore in popular view, it must be the same thing. Very well said. This is indeed what's happening. More reason not to trust the laws of man. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: why should it be trusted?
At 10:22 AM -0700 10/17/00, Kerry L. Bonin wrote: At 08:24 AM 10/17/00 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote: That totals 14 orders of magnitude (and I think that's generous). So use keys that are six bytes longer than a "reasonable" opponent could crack. problem solved. 2048-bit RSA is still way out of their league. Unless their approach to factoring is radically different. I've seen some extremely clever ideas leak into the non-classified press, like holographic systems for realtime off-aspect optical pattern matching for targeting systems. Simple tricks that reduce the theoritical n-GFLOPS/MIPS of computing time to a few clocks. Factoring is such a fundamental operation, I can't accept that the NFS is the optimal attack. You still don't get it, do you? A holographic system buys polynomial factors of improvement, not exponential factors. Shamir said as much, of course, with his optical tools he was writing about a few years back. You keep referring to these "tricks" for reducing exptime to "a few clocks." Paranoia is useful, but assuming that the NSA "must" have some selection of tricks which would astound and shake the world, absent any indications that this is so, is beyond paranoia and is into some weird kind of NSA-is-the-Great-Oz worship. As Declan said, extraordinary claims require extraoridinary proof. All you've done so far is to hand wave (and somethingelse-wave) about how custom silicon and unspecified tricks _must_ be useful. As another poster noted, where's the 10^78-fold improvement? (And the 10^200-fold improvement? Etc.) --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Cypherpunks is archived?
At 1:33 PM -0700 10/17/00, Ray Dillinger wrote: On Tue, 17 Oct 2000, John Galt wrote: Cypherpunks is archived? Isn't that against what most cypherpunks stand for? I know it sets up a "style fingerprint" attack against anonymity... Do you imagine for an instant that a list like this could go out, be available to anonymous people, and *NOT* be archived? I guarantee various interested parties including Law Enforcement Agencies are archiving it, and would be whether or not anyone else did and whether or not any public archives were available. In fact, I'm betting that their archives are more complete than the ones on the web, and I wish we could restore some stuff from those records that's gotten lost from the web archives. In particular, I designed a digital-cash protocol once and discussed it on this list, and it's not in the web archives. I'd like to have that back, it would save me some design work when I go to implement it. We can't stop anybody who gets cypherpunks from archiving it. We can't stop anybody from getting cypherpunks. QED, there *are* archives. Some of them might as well be public. Occasionally they are useful, or contain worthwhile URL's. Not only this, but it was a backburner project for several years to take the toad archives and convert them to a CD-ROM for distribution. So much for "against what most cypherpunks stand for." Cypherpunks don't believe that security comes through obscurity. Those who wish to protect their identities should take positive measures to do so. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Ralph Nader sends privacy survey to Bush and Gore campaigns
At 10:44 PM -0700 10/10/00, Ray Dillinger wrote: On Tue, 10 Oct 2000, petro wrote: I get the same impression--They seem like National (as opposed to International) Socialists. Ah. I see that, in accordance with ancient usenet and mailing-list tradition, the discussion is now over. Bear May's Corollary to Godwin's Law: At least 97% of all invocations of Godwin's Law are done so to squelch debate. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Ralph Nader sends privacy survey to Bush and Gore campaigns
At 1:22 PM -0400 10/10/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: I think communism has too many negative connotations to be used nowadays... So communitarian is a new word for the old philosophy. Kinda like progressive as a replacement for statist or whatnot. -Declan Why give them a term which, at least to some, sounds noble? Communitarian, indeed! I favor the more descriptive term: simp-wimps. As for Nader and the Green Party, fuck 'em. There's nothing even remotely tolerable about them. The Green Party, for example, calls for a 100% income tax on all income above some level. I expect most of them need to be liquidated in the purge. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: request for info about DU
At 6:27 PM +0100 10/10/00, Hansen Linn wrote: I am a journalist student who need some basic info about Depleted Uranium. Why and how has it depleted Do u have any usefull links were I can find this info?? There will be vast numbers of Web pages available. Use search engines. I worked a lot with depleted uranium in a past career. It's natural uranium from which the U-235 isotope has been removed, leaving the U-238 isotope. Inasmuch as U-238 is the bulk of naturally occurring uranium, DU is not very different from ordinary uranium as mined and processed into the metallic form. Though mildly radioactive (half-life of billions of years...4.5 billion, IIRC), its very high density makes it ideal for sailboat keels, cores of anti-tank and anti-ship shells, etc. (When used in a weapon, the DU adds to the penetration, and also ignites and burns...this has nothing whatsoever to do with its radioactivity, though.) Again, consult online sources, or encyclopedias. And if you asked on the Cypherpunks list because you thought it would be cute to implicate us in nuclear weapons chatter, get a clue. If not, it was still the wrong place to ask such a question. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: stego for the censored
At 4:09 PM -0700 10/6/00, Michael Motyka wrote: I'm currently looking for a way to get encrypted data via stego to people who live in countries where crypto is illegal, and who may be watched. so just sending them a large graphic would likely arouse suspicion. ... Since the amount of information you need to send and the channel/event capacity for stego'd information are unspecified maybe you're looking for a general solution. Part of a general solution might be a scatter-gather mechanism. XMIT The information you need to send is broken up into multiple pieces and an index. The simplest method would be a flat structure but a tree is acceptable. Redundancy via overlapping segments could be introduced. Redundancy/error correction might be useful if Mallet is inclined for example to mess with whitespace in your e-mail. Anyway, the pieces are stego'd into multiple carriers that are made available via any and all protocols. In places where crypto is illegal, this approach would also likely be illegal. "But, Obergruppenfuhrer Mueller, I am not actually using crypto. These hundreds of broken up files I have received are merely unwanted messages sent to me. " BTW, the issue is a lot more than just "plausible deniability." This may work in the U.S., until the Constitution is further shredded. But "plausibility deniability" is not enough when dealing with the Staasi, or SAVAK, or Shin Bet, or the Ayotollahs. Mere suspicion is enough. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Down with techno-egalitarinism, from a reluctant cpunk
mous remailers and ZKS and Mojo Nation! Is there a "middle path"? Can the center hold, as the Brits would ask? Doesn't look like it to me. Oh, sure, there will still be taxes. The governments can still tax houses, and cars, and threaten meatspace people with various dire actions if they don't cough up some geld to the protection racket. But the exponential increase in bandwidth and the accompanying degrees of freedom will forever change things politically. And this is not new. I mentioned printing. It revolutionized Europe and led to the destruction of guilds--the "intellectual property" holders of their day. (Make no mistake, the Guild of Leather Tanners "owned" their knowledge in a way quite similar to how modern corporations and governments claim to own knowledge.) Printing made "how to" books possible (the next most popular books after religious hymnals and bibles). The power of guilds began to decline. Likewise, religion changed dramatically...courtesy of "95 Theses" and accessibility of pamphlets and bibles written in the common languages of the time. The Industrial Revolution was another "knowledgequake" which triggered vast changes in the landscape of politics, the law, and everything else. Including taxation, interestingly enough. (Left to the reader to consider how modern factories made possible certain types of taxation and centralization of power.) Suppose an earlier version of Mr. Fazekas was asking whether these changes--printing, steam engines, factory production, electrification, automobiles, computers, the list is long--should be "allowed"? Allowed by _whom_? Now, I grant that we don't know yet know if the Net and its related technologies (crypto, notably) is comparable to the invention of printing and the Industrial Revolution. Or even as important as the telephone. Personally, I think the Net--or, more broadly, the colonization of cyberspace--is a dramatic, world-changing event. Not exactly a surprising revelation to most folks today, given the changes in just the past five years that Web browsers have been commonly available. But profound nonetheless. Where will government be in twenty years? What will happen to local laws when cyberspace makes movement around the world so easy? When regulatory arbitrage moots nearly any law? When untraceable and unbreakable crypto allows "impenetrable bobbles" (a la Vinge) to be erected at will? When digital reputations, handled on a peer-to-peer basis and not subject to "top-down" commands, become the currency of cypherspace? Unrealistic? Check back in a decade and see where things are headed. Meanwhile, I welcome Mr. Fazekas to our community. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Re: police IR searches to Supremes
At 2:14 PM -0700 9/28/00, Michael Motyka wrote: BTW I tried the hydroponic vegatables thing once. Some fresh greens or spices are nice but it's not economical to use electric lights exclusively. CH recommended: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684818620/cypherpunkshyper Buy This Book! Buy This Book! [Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Author Index] [http://www.inet-one.com/cypherpunks/current/subject.htmlSubject Index] http://www.inet-one.com/cypherpunks/ Re: police IR searches to Supremes This is getting to be tiresome. Please stop including bullshit MIME cruft in e-mail. If you do it one more time I plan to killfile you. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Meth bill resurfaces on Capitol Hill
At 2:33 PM -0700 9/26/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/09/22/0247244mode=thread Methamphetamine Bill Resurfaces on Capitol Hill posted by cicero on Saturday September 23, @04:43AM from the accelerating-speed-bill dept. Everyone thought the Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act had died this summer, but a source close to the issue tells us the Senate has resurrected this nasty bit of legislation. Among other things, the bill would ban links to drug-related websites. It didn't quite get enough momentum on its own, so some of our more censorhappy congresscritters attached it to the entirely unrelated Bankruptcy Reform Act, part of which could allow police to conduct secret searches of your home. That bill is currently before a conference committee, which has only about a week left to finish it before Congress adjourns for the year. You may want to contact your legislators before it's too late. Contact our legislators before it's too late? What, and deprive us of targets of opportunity? As far as I'm concerned, and I think the Law supports me in this, if I happen to find someone skulking around in my house I can blow them away at will. Besides, if the police and narcs take to sneaking into folks' homes at night, without a warrant, then obviously their hives deserve to be mcveighed. Even if they've installed some rugrats as human shields. Eggs breaking and all that. Nothing surprises me anymore. They all need killing. Tens of thousands of them at the very least. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: CDR: Re: Lions and Tigers and Backdoors, oh, my...
At 4:45 PM -0700 9/26/00, Michael Motyka wrote: http://www.inet-one.com/cypherpunks/ Re: CDR: Re: Lions and Tigers and Backdoors, CH recommended: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684818620/cypherpunkshyper Buy This Book! http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0786889136/cypherpunkshyper Buy This Book! Keep this advertising shit off of the list. Fucking unbelievable. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Fwd: Re: First Cypherpunks Physical Meeting Europe
Cypherpunks, I sent this out this morning. I left the huge "To:" list intact, even though many/most are censorioius, closed lists. I knew I would get a bunch of bounces, saying I was not authorized to post to their elite list. What I didn't check was whether the _real_ list, Cypherpunks, was on the distribution list. It wasn't. The fuckheads out there who blather about being "coderpunks" and "cryptorights" warriors are not even posting to Cypherpunks. And yet they claim, falsely, to organizing the "first cypherpunks physical meeting in Europe." I guess what Churchill said is right: "The Hun is either at your throat or at your feet." Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2000 15:12:00 -0700 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Tim May [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: First Cypherpunks Physical Meeting Europe Cc: Bcc: X-Attachments: At 11:39 AM +0200 9/24/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Saturday the 30th of September at 16:00 h there will be held the first cypherpunks physical meeting in Europe. In the interest of accuracy, this is certainly NOT the "first Cypherpunks physical meeting in Europe." For example, " 4th Cypherpunks meeting, London --- Will be held Saturday, 20 February 1993, at 1400 in the office of: FOREST 4th Floor 2 Grosvenor Gardens London SW1W 0DH 071-823-6550 " Or there are the various meetings held in or near Amsterdam: When: Saturday, August 9, 1997 at 1:00 PM PDT. [22:00 local] Where: The Workshop tent, HIP'97 Campground, Almere, The Netherlands. And there are the ones held at the homes or hotels of American Cypherpunks living/working in places in Europe. I recall several mentions of these. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: RC4 source as a literate program
At 1:28 PM -0500 9/5/00, Gary Jeffers wrote: Fellow Cypherpunks, THE LAWYER GAMBIT I remember reading in old anti-IRS literature about a technique for avoiding prosecutions. A client would tell a lawyer that he wanted to do something and would ask if it were legal to do. The lawyer would then give his opinion as to wheather it was legal or not. If the lawyer said that it was legal and gave his opinion in writing, then the client could proceed without out worry. The lawyer's opinion would stop any criminal prosecution. And the nitwits who believed this are now serving ten to twenty on income tax evasion charges. You really think that if I, for example, were to waste three years of my life getting a law degree and then passing the bar that my advice would absolve someone of criminal charges/ You were a fool several years ago. Apparently the years you were away have not helped. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Lee Free - Judge Apologizes For Government's Conduct
At 2:06 PM -0700 9/13/00, Eric Cordian wrote: http://www.newsday.com/ap/national/ap254.htm ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- After nine months in solitary confinement, Wen Ho Lee pleaded guilty Wednesday to a single count of mishandling nuclear secrets and was set free by an apologetic judge who said the government's actions ''embarrassed our entire nation.'' ... ''I sincerely apologize to you, Dr. Lee, for the unfair manner in which you were held in custody by the executive branch,'' Parker said. Parker said the Departments of Justice and Energy ''have embarrassed our entire nation and each of us who is a citizen of it.'' Lee spent 9 months in solitary confinement and lost significant salary and retirement benefits. This makes it a moral requirement that former Defense Secretary William Perry face a similar period of confinement and similar loss of benefits. Perry has acknowledged downloading top secrets to his home computer and leaving codeword material where his family, housekeepers, and other visitors could have found and copied it. There are a couple of cases of other DOD folks in the same straits. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Voluntary Mandatory Taxes
At 10:35 AM -0700 9/12/00, Marshall Clow wrote: At 4:44 AM + 9/12/00, Michael Shields wrote: In article a0431010cb5e346ed8216@[207.111.241.215], Tim May [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/13169.html "Here's something to think about - while queuing up for petrol this afternoon (yes - I confess to being a panic buyer) I worked out that OPEC is charging $30 a barrel and our government is taxing us at slightly over $150 a barrel - ouch!" $30 (now $35) is the price of a barrel of *light sweet crude*, not the price of a barrel of refined gasoline. At http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_921000/921903.stm there is a breakdown of the costs of petrol to the English motorist: (all prices are pence/liter, so multiply by 0.05425 to convert to $/gal) Refinery: 17.2 [ I'm guessing this includes raw oil costs ] Retailer:4.2 VAT:12.64 Duty: 50.89 Total 84.9 [ this is the price at the pump ] that's 74.8% tax, folks. Which is of course what the original article was saying. A nit, but "74.8% tax" may be misleading to some. It suggests a tax rate of "only" about 10 times the normal sales tax (normal in the States, for ordinary goods). In fact, the 75% is of course 75% of the final price. Or, roughly a 400% tax on the original commodity. For example, imagine a Jaguar XK8 costing $60K plus $240K in taxes. 75% in taxes would suggest 60K plus 45K. The oil situation is 400% in taxes. Welcome to statism. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: GA-CAT-CA
At 6:02 PM -0400 9/11/00, R. A. Hettinga wrote: But, again, I'm sure the thing was a spoof. Nope not a spoof. Heard it on NPR, and several other outlets the day it came out. Remember, they use animal parts (bugs, plants, animal fur, whatever) in forensics all the time. The "request for fur" bit is probably a minor vamp of other requests for the same kids of stuff, done all the time, viz, "May we take a foot print, sir? We're just trying to exclude you from our investigation...", up to and including subpoenas for, apparently now, Snowball's fur... OK, I did some digging and found various URLs for the reports (nope, I won't give them here...if "A. Melon" chose not to give any references, who am I to disagree?). The data base is planned to be about 1600 samples, which should be enough to disambiguate a "grey cat hair" found at a crime scene from others. That is, they are not seeking to get traceability. And they figure they can get their 1600 cat sample purely by voluntary means. So, it sounds plausible, even interesting. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: PRNG server
At 11:09 PM -0700 8/29/00, petro wrote: Would a public PRNG (Yarrow?) server be of any use? I suppose it could be done as a proof-of-concept, or as another source of entropy for an internal PRNG... and the trust issue could be dealt with just as you deal with the Intel PRNG. IMO, the bandwidth would be the limitation here; an intranet (LAN) PRNG might be better. The trust issue can be dealt with by a combination of 2 methods, first the traditional trust model--provide a consistent source of randomness over a long enough time, and people will trust it. Secondly, encrypt the random bits for delivery--that way the receiver can trust that the bits they get, they alone get. How do you figure this? The supplier can copy anyone else he chooses. He may even be the NSA. Folks, this notion of "getting your random bits from others" is a recurring stupidity. Fact is, generating fairly good random bits is easy enough to do, with Zeners or mouse swirls or microphone noise. And my "fairly good" point should not be a basis for saying "Aha, you admit they are only "fairly good."" A thousand bits generated locally, and perhaps run through some cryptographic crunching to distill out the entropy, are better than a thousand bits generated by some other agent. If this needs to be explained, there's no point in doing so. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Whipped Europeans
At 9:49 AM -0700 8/31/00, Michael Motyka wrote: Petro wrote: What do you expect from a bunch of whipped Europeans? To quote T. Pratchett "They don't need chains, they have obedience." The only difference is that they know they are whipped. We have the chains but no obedience. Chains paid for by our own money. I'm trying to avoid bashing Europeans. They have their chains, these United States have their own chains, and so on. Europe doesn't have nearly as much of a fascist War on (Some) Drugs causing doors to be knocked down, pre-dawn raids, aerial surveillance helicopters (*), billions in military aid and "advisors" sent to growing regions, and "drugs for arms" scandals. Or, rather, they have a _fraction_ of what these United States have in these areas. (* Re: the drug helicopters: my area is in the Santa Cruz Mountains, a noted marijuana growing region. Several films about drug culture have been filmed here, including Billy Bob Thornton's "Homegrown" and the film "Quiet Cool" some years ago. August is the month when choppers are zooming up and down the canyons as part of "CAMP," the Campaign Against Marijuana Production. Choppers find pot fields, troops are dispatched, shoot-outs occur. All over a plant, an agricultural product which several of the Founders grew on their plantations. And Santa Cruz also has the fascist police state habit of subpoenaing the customer records of hydroponics equipment sellers and then launching raids against those who bought such equipment. Welcome to Amerika.) Europe has many police state tendencies. So do these United States. (By the way, I am deliberately using the "pre-War of Northern Aggression" formulation: "these United States," as opposed to the post-1865 shift to "_the_ United States." The union was a union of states, with states joining the union assured that they could depart when they elected to no longer be part of the union. The First Fascist, Lincoln, put an end to this when he disallowed the southern states from leaving the union. So much for the voluntary part, eh? The First Fascist also set in motion the various trends flowering today.) Sadly, Europe has accelerated its move toward statism with the European Union and also the widening of NATO to include many eastern european nations (at a time when the theat from Russia is ebbing). The Common Market was a pretty good idea, just as NAFTA was a good idea in recent years. But a common economic market, with minimal or no tariffs, is not at all the same thing as a merging of currencies, laws, and local policies. Currency conversions are cheap, and dynamic currencies make for competition, which is good. (And, of course, all believers in liberty would support the right of an Italian to price his goods in any currency he wishes to, from dollars to D-marks.) The rise of a European Union and a surging NATO is likely to lessen liberties and expand the power of the state. And when Denmark and Norway, say, decide to leave the Union, look for the fascists to dust off the speeches of Lincoln. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Blood in the Gears of the Machinery of Freedom?
At 11:10 AM -0400 8/25/00, R. A. Hettinga wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- "The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations." -- David Friedman, _The_Machinery_of_Freedom_ It's one of my favorites, too. One hopes that if there is an afterlife he has a chance to explain it to his six million fellow Jews who went to the crematoria chanting this mantra. Or he could fly to Rwanda and tell this to the Hutus and Tutsis. Touché. Nietzsche's "Where are your claws?", and all that. Certainly the creation of superior force-capability, and the will to use it, especially on people who can't or won't fight back, creates situations like the above. The book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" is chock-a-block with examples of the same kind of thing throughout human history. It's interesting, nonetheless, that the cases above are perfect examples of exactly what David Friedman (for those here who don't know of him, he's the current intellectual standard-bearer for anarcho-capitalism, a "law and economics" professor in Santa Clara, and the son of Milton and Rose Friedman) was talking about: nation states using force as a poor solution to the distribution of limited resources. Well, to cite another German philosopher, Heidegger, one has to consider one's "thrown-ness." We are _thrown_ into situations not necessarily of our making. In this context, it does little to cite the historical reasons why _states_ caused the problems in 1930s Germany or in 1990s Rwanda. For the person in those places at those times, his situation, his thrown-ness, was what mattered. And this is the context for deciding whether to use "direct use of physical force." The Hutu facing a gang of machete-wielding Tutsis, or vice versa, would be well-advised to use his FAL to mow them down. Ditto for Jews in Hitler's Germany, Kulaks in Stalin's U.S.S.R., and in a hundred other such examples. My point was that aphorisms about how "violence never accomplishes anything" and variants like the Friedman quote, fail to recognize the ground truth, the thrown-ness of the situation. Of course, libertarians often play the game of saying "but in the cases you describe, you are not _initiating_ force, merely defending yourself." Of course. So take all of my comments about "X needs killing" to mean "X has intitated the use of force and reasonable men will kill X if necessary to defend themselves." Same result, just more awkward. And with no more semantic meaning than saying "X needs killing." Just syntactic sugar. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: stupid hackers
At 11:08 AM -0700 8/20/00, Steve Schear wrote: At 08:39 AM 8/20/00 -0700, you wrote: Here's another protocol question though; how could the script kiddies have *used* the keys (eg, to get money) without creating a route through which they could be traced? Remember ATMs all mount cameras these days, and their locations are, of course, known. It's clear that the script kiddies are not thinking in terms of protocols though -- they've got pretty much the same approach as those idiots who rob banks without bothering to wear gloves or a mask. You've answered your own question. Walk up to the ATM late at night wearing a mask. I've seen ragheads^H^H^H^H^H Muslim chicks in front of me at the ATM wearing their Mohammed-decreed chadoors. No sirens, no cops arriving, but their money apparently arrives in a timely fashion. Likewise, I've seen punk/goth kids in white pancake makeup, black hair, rings through numerous facial features, and dark sunglasses. As much of a disguise as any mask. And yet they get their money, with no sirens, no Thought Police. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: europe physical meeting
At 4:48 PM +0200 8/17/00, Ralf-Philipp Weinmann wrote: How about setting up a seperate mailing-list for discussion agenda etc ? The s/n-ratio on Cypherpunks is a little bit too high for my taste. I just checked: no articles from you on the Cypherpunks list. The best way to improved S/N is to post more signal. Complaining about low S/N just never seems to help, does it? --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
RE: Major University to Review Carnivore [cpunk]
At 2:59 PM -0400 8/14/00, Trei, Peter wrote: -- From: Bill Stewart[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] At 11:04 AM 8/11/00 -0700, jeradonah wrote: Major University to Be Asked to Review F.B.I.'s 'Carnivore' Pesonally, I agree that the problem with Carnivore is not in the device itself, but rather in the mindset that suggests that this type of device is acceptable at all. University of Oceania Selected to Review FBI's New Video Escrow Child Protection System Airstrip One, OC. FBI Director Lewis Free announced today that the University of Oceania has been selected to review the FBI's Video Escrow Child Protection System. "We have listened to the concerns of the proles. We in the Inner Party are not dismissive of their legitimate concerns," he said. "B.B. has instructed us to work with industry to achieve a fair and impartial review," he added. University of Oceania Chancellor O'Brien has promised a speedy review. "The proles have a right to know whether the FBI's cameras can only be turned on according to the law." "Oceania has always been a nation of laws," he added, smiling up at the camera in his office.
Re: The Standard discovers Regulatory Arbitrage
At 12:43 PM +0100 8/9/00, R. A. Hettinga wrote: http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,17365,00.html?nl=met They actually use the words "regulatory arbitrage". We're all getting old, right? :-). We didn't invent the term, I hope you realize. It's been around longer than we have. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Welcome to Crypto World
utiae. This is why young men tend to focus for several years on some rare type of caterpillar, or some obscure mathematical theory, and so on. As people get older, they become more general. The prospect of toiling away for several years on a very focused project becomes less attractive. They also "know too much" about how projects can fail, about how their results are likely to be used, etc. Which is a long way of saying that I'm probably not going to put thousands of man-hours into building my ideas of a protocol generator! Even though five years from now I may look back and say to myself: "You know, if you devoted the time you did to the Cypherpunks list to Python or Squeak, you could have made a lot of progress." It just doesn't seem to work out that way. And there's the issue of recruiting helpers and suchlike. Few large software projects happen with just one person (Phil Z. did PGP 1.0, but it was essentially DOA. PGP 2.0 was a project with about half a dozen participants, and it's the one that got used.). I do a lot better writing anarcho-capitalist screeds than I would ever do recruiting helpers on a software project like this. I would certainly encourage people to look into this. The core crypto is already there: RSA operations (soon to be unencumbered), modular exponentiations, blinding (still encumbered, but there are the "agnostic" workarounds discussed by Barnes and Goldberg), etc. And there are powerful languages like Python (they tell me) for gluing together such things. There is absolutely no reason why a "Crypto World" cannot be built, with more and more of these protocols that Ray lists not implemented with varying degrees of efficiency and robustness. Even if crudely implementing, exploring interactions in this Crypto World would be interesting, and possibly useful in the Real World. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: The word gullible is not in any dictionary
At 4:35 PM -1000 7/26/00, Reese wrote: At 09:17 AM 26/07/00 -0700, Tim May wrote: At 9:18 PM -1000 7/25/00, Reese wrote: At 11:19 PM 25/07/00 -0700, Tim May wrote: Get a clue. You do know, don't you, Reeza, that neither "irony" nor "gullible" are in any English dictionary? And that subject line? What, am I supposed to provide a link from m-w.com now? Get a life. No further comment is needed. A) Your claim, that "irony" and "gullible" are not in the dictionary, is patently false - as anyone with half-a-clue and rudimentary knowledge of the English language knows. Please let us know when you have even half-a-clue. I haven't gotten anybody on the "did you know the word "gullible" isn't in any dictionary?" line in several years. I once said there ought to be an IQ test before proles are allowed to join the CP list. In your case, you've flunked out several times. Most notably, this time. A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Not as much to waste in your case, fortunately. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Infanticide
At 9:33 PM -0700 7/24/00, Kevin Elliott wrote: The jist of the Roe vs. Wade descision (and an earlier case whose name I do not recall which involved the outlawing of birth control use) was that enforcement of these laws would require such unbearable invasions of ones person that by virtue of this the laws were unconstitutional. Another way of putting this would be for the government to I support a woman's right to choose, and her right to privacy. If she--and only _she_ can decide!!!--that her child must be "removed by her choice," then she, and only she, can decide to kill little Johnny or Suzie. So long as she does it in private, infanticide is Her Right. (Even Kindergartencide, which in many cases is even more justified, is a Woman's Right to Choose.) Some radical Right to Choosers are now willing to extend the right to privacy to the teenaged years. And who would dare to interfere with a Woman's Right to Choose? --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Persistent lack of signal
At 11:34 AM -0700 7/24/00, Michael Motyka wrote: The CP threads are just the ripples from a torpedo that is long gone. They'll be expended agitating the plankton and polishing sand on a beach. I'm a little bummed about Cryptome. The vulnerabilities of the net are scary. Anyone can be nixed, anytime. This needs to be corrected. Adding FBI nodes to ISP's sites is a definite dozen steps backwards towards totalitarianism. That's why Congress will probably allow it. It's historically been hard to nix Usenet. (Nix Usenix? Never mind.) The PSIA docs posted widely to Usenet would be awfully hard to stop. (As for the file sizes, the 130K size is less than most of tens of thousands of binaries posted daily. The entire PSIA file is less than "HeatherHootersBigTits176." A drop in the ocean. Alt.cypherpunks exists. Mail to Usenet gateways exist. Do the math.) Cryptome, like ZKS, like Sealand, has some bothersome single points of attack/failure. The fact that John Young is a Known Person, with a Known Site, at a Known Provider, opens him up for all kinds of mischief, ranging from black bag jobs to install bugs and keyboard sniffers all the way to criminal prosecution under the Espionage Act. The FBI leaned on the site owner with the "Y2K training tape," and various USG and other nations' agencies have leaned on sites before. If a site can be traced to a jurisdiction, expect trouble. All of these above entities act in varying ways as "data havens." Cryptome for all of the traditional Web site stuff, ZKS for ostensibly permitting unpopular political and religious and sexual views (*) to be untraceable, and Sealand because they are supposedly untouchable by British and European law. Well, these ain't real data havens. The "work factor" in attacking these sites--legally, physically, denial of service, etc.--is just not very large enough. These approaches are ind of like the "ROT13" of data havens--OK for very casual use, but too small a speed bump to be interesting. (The underlying crypto of both Freedom and the various PK crypto of Sealand may of course be quite good. But the "work factor" has many elements, ranging from attaching Semtex to the supports or placing a padlock over ZKS's front doors.) We've discussed real data havens many times over the years. (* I still hope ZKS succeeds, but their terms and conditions about being willing to cancel nyms doesn't give me hope that this is a stable, usable, long-term platform for data haven types of activities. Had John Young been running Cryptome via a Freedom node, I expect his nym would have been cancelled when the RCMP and other Canadian agencies leaned heavily on ZKS. Even more obviously, had a site for Homolka-Teale material been operated via Freedom, it surely would have been shut down. Even if the nyms were usd by U.S. residents.) --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Choate proposing Dropping toad.com
At 11:00 AM -0700 7/24/00, Bill Stewart wrote: Jim - have you sent mail to Hugh and John directly? Or just to the mailing list bot-owners, plus postmaster and root, which they don't likely check very often, even when Hugh's not on yet another summer of international travel? You probably don't want to drop JYA or Hugh or Pablos, though they could easily enough be redirected. Some of the subscribers are clearly gateways to local Usenet groups that let people read the list with newsreaders. But do we ever see any interesting contributions from these supposed Usenet group readers? I recall very few. I scanned the list of several hundred or more toad.com subscribers and I barely recognized most of them. Any active contributors to the list surely must understand by now that toad.com is not like all the other nodes...the more astute of them must have figured out how and why John Gilmore told us in early 1997 not to use toad.com anymore. Personally, I filter all toad.com posts into a special folder. This has most of the "unsuscrive me" and "get me off this fuckin list doodz!" noise. It also has most of the "make money fast" and "this is not spam!" spam. It sometimes has some signal, but mostly I figure anyone still posting to toad.com has not been visited by the clue fairy. Choate was hardly the first to suggest dropping toad.com as a node. As for all those hundreds reading the toad.com list, send them a message! (In fact, I'll leave "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" on the cc: list. This way they can see the discussion and perhaps figure out what's going on. Of course, these hundreds of subscribers, with names like "[EMAIL PROTECTED]," have apparently been untouched by the many, many past discussions of toad.com, so why even worry about leaving one of these "suscrivers" in the lurch?) I think it does make sense to move the toad users to a different server and set an autoresponder pointing to the current list-server locations. That won't prevent the problem of harassers subscribing the list to other lists, but it's a start. The big negative about it is that originating users at one-way remailers won't get the bouncegrams, but most people who know how to use remailers can find us anyway. Why bother with "moving them"? Let them move their own damn asses. If they haven't figured out by now that toad.com is a disfavored address, it's arguable that they don't belong on our list. Some remain on toad.com out of habit. Most who are subscribed to toad.com are, I surmise, either long-gone from their accounts or have cobbled-together filters to deal with the strange mail they are getting. (I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that the bounce traffic to toad is enormous and that the site operators (JG-owned, HD-operated, at least at one time) simply let the megabytes pile up until the space is reclaimed.) Let them go. Those interested in "saving" the preterite toadsters can send out messages to the toadies telling them how to subscribe to other lists. I think of it as evolution in action. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: John Young, the PSIA, and Aum
At 6:41 PM -1000 7/22/00, Reese wrote: All, as in _ALL_ members, past and present, or just present? That wasn't exactly clear, now that you say "*all*". Backing them into a corner is exactly what should be done, if they refuse to renounce the past actions and their association with the Aum .org, whatever name it is calling itself today. For the sake of clarifying the issues, let us move the events to an American setting. Suppose some members of a group, call it the Aphasics Liberation Army, APA, commit some serious, even heinous, crime. Should all members of the ALA who do not "renounce the past actions and their association with the ALA" then be denied the right to enroll their children in taxpayer-funded schools and other things Kristen cited? What new form of McCarthism are folks like Reese and Ernest Hua now supporting? Last I checked, the U.S. Constitution doesn't say a damn word about my civil rights being lost because I refuse to take a loyalty oath or because I refuse to denounce some members of a group I may have once belonged to or may even still belong to. I swear, Cypherpunks are some of the most politically ignorant people I've ever been in contact with. As you said, the story is incomplete. Look before leaping, eh? Take your paragraph above. How could jya know that the japanese would want the list taken down, before posting it? Logic fault, there,,, Because he was communicating with his Japanese source, who knew quite well that the PSIA did not want this story aired. Duh. There ought to be an I.Q. test before people are allowed to join the Cypherpunks list. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Dropping the Code of Silence (was Re: Dropping toad.com
At 9:22 AM +0200 7/21/00, Anonymous wrote: Reese [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I tried a "who" on cyberpass about a year ago, it didn't work. I tried it three years ago, two years ago and last month. It worked each time. Food for thought, that all the CDR's now have the "who" enabled. Does the word "compromised" belong in that previous sentence? There still hasn't been an (onlist) accounting of what was up with cyberpass, or why the old subscriber list wasn't instituted. Narrows the field, of known subscribers to anonymous posters, when "who" is enabled, doesn't it? You can use a nym address to subscribe, or you can use freedom.net and read the web archive. Otherwise you would have to trust the list admin and all ISPs involved in delivering the mail to keep your subscription confidential. Funny that so many people don't know the "who" command. It has been in Tim's FAQ since 1994: - Remember, the list of subscribers is _not_ a secret--it can be gotten by sending a "who cypherpunks" message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Anyone in the world can do this. Yep. I thought this was still common knowledge. I guess not. People are starting to rely on "security through obscurity," the strategy of the ostrich. As for the notion that the cyberpass list lost its subscriber base temporarily just so (I gather the theory goes...) anonymous posters could be uncovered during that several day periodjeesh. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
The World According to Choate
At 10:03 PM -0700 7/13/00, Kevin Elliott wrote: At 21:32 -0500 7/13/00, Jim Choate wrote: On Thu, 13 Jul 2000, Kevin Elliott wrote: A corporation is an organization collectively owned by a group of individuals, by the 14th, all powers denied to the federal government are denied to the states as well. A corporation is collectively owned by a group of people and thus every single right you have as an individual in regards to your personal property apply. No exceptions, no invented rights, it's black and white. A corporation has the same protections as an individual. Interesting, But wrong. "An artificial being created by operation of law, with an existance distinct from the individuals (shareholders) who are its "owners". Business Law Emerson, Hardwicke (Barron's) ISBN 0-7641-0101-3 And how does that change my earlier statement? We're allowed to own beings as well as object (cats, dogs, rats, squirrels, etc...) and all of these beings have an existence distinct from their owners. Your not allowed to search my dog without my permission anymore than your allowed to search my house. Kevin, You need to understand that Jim Choate frequently (usually?) has idiosyncratic views of how the Constitution works, of what prime numbers are, of how electromagnetic laws really work, of what history was, and so on. In Choate Prime, a universe which exists parallel to our own, the Constitution does not apply to corporations because it only applies to individuals. In Choate Prime, the "New York Times" is routinely told what it may print and has its offices searched regularly without search warrants...because it is a corporation and hence is not, in Choate Prime, covered by the First and Fourth Amendments. In Choate Prime a restaurant may have its property seized without due process simply because constitutional guarantees of due process and concerns about "takings" only apply to individuals. And in Choate Prime, a church or other group may be told which prayers it may use, because, as all Choate Primates know, the separation of church and state applies only to individuals, not to companies, corporations, clubs, mailing lists, churches, and other groups. Because in Choate Prime the Bill of Rights only applies to individuals, not to newspapers, churches, corporations, and clubs. Of course, these very groups and churches and suchlike exist only at the sufferance of the government, because "freedom of association" applies only to individuals. As soon as a group is named, whether "Church of Mormon" or "Intel Corporation," it no longer has any Bill of Rights protections. A weird world. But at least they have unlimited energy from Tesla Physics. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Definition: Hacker
At 11:37 PM +0200 4/30/99, Jan Dobrucki wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hello, Can someone tell what the definition of the term hacker is? I don't mean what people think, I mean the dictionary term. Jan Dobrucki -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Then consult a dictionary. There are many on-line dictionaries. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
More trolling from cops?
At 12:21 PM -0400 6/26/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: can you e-mail me withh all bomb resipies espesially gun powder my e-mail is [EMAIL PROTECTED] thankyou The naively obvious misspellings and the characteristic "can you e-mail me" form once again shows a cop somewhere is trying to entrap someone. I receive a couple of these a day, almost always of the same form. Sometimes I think the solution is to track down these requesters and deliver the bombs they crave so badly. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Artificial intelligence filter blocks news -- but not smut
At 10:06 AM -0400 6/20/00, Declan McCullagh wrote:
Some pornographic images BAIR approved as OK and a Perl test-script:
http://www.well.com/user/declan/bair/
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,36923,00.html
Smut Filter Blocks All But Smut
by Declan McCullagh ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
3:00 a.m. Jun. 20, 2000 PDT
When Exotrope Inc. introduced its BAIR smut-blocking
software last year, everyone seemed wowed by the company's
claims of intelligent filtering.
A fine piece of journalism, Declan. Actual research, actual testing of claims.
I don't follow the "filtering" business, but it seems odd that there
are not services which rate the effectiveness of filtering services.
(Perhaps Wired News can do something like this, on a regular basis...)
I understand that this case is somewhat different, in that Exotrope
apparently claimed to be able to use AI methods ("Whoah, dude, it's
_AI_!!') to rate sites on the fly, based on the images themselves.
Most filter services block access by keywords associated with the
sites, e.g., the "beaver" nonsense we just heard about here.
New York Governor George Pataki applauded Exotrope's
"state-of-the-art technology," Tucows Network gave BAIR five
stars, and PC Magazine handed the program a coveted editor's
choice award.
Which surprises even me. Did PC Magazine not even bother to try some
sites to see if Exotrope rejected or accepted them?
In tests of hundreds of images, BAIR incorrectly blocked
dozens of photographs including portraits, landscapes, animals,
and street scenes. It banned readers from viewing news
photos at time.com and newsweek.com,
Sounds good to me...
but rated images of
oral sex, group sex, and masturbation as acceptable
Hey, maybe it's really a porn search engine in disguise.
Company representatives say they can't explain the program's
seemingly random behavior.
"I agree with you. There's something wrong," says Dave Epler,
Exotrope operations manager. "That's not the way our image
server is supposed to be working."
For a lot of reasons, the Exotrope product sounds like snake oil. The
first principles issues of an AI program successfully identifying
material allegedly harmful to minors, this inability to reinstantiate
a working version, and the odd coincidence of the program allegedly
having "something wrong" with it just as Declan points out the gaping
flaws in it.
Exotrope, a privately held firm based in Elmira, New York,
Gee, Exotrop is in New York. Governor Pataki is in New York.
Reporters might wish to look into whether or not multiple copies of
Exotrope have recently been installed in New York state computers.
Wired News tested BAIR by creating a Perl program to extract
images randomly from an 87MB database of thousands of both
pornographic and non-pornographic photographs. The program
then assigned each of those images random numbers as file
names.
Good methodology, Declan.
The results were dramatic: BAIR inexplicably blocked between
90 and 95 percent of the photographs with no regard for
whether they were sexually explicit or not. Of the ones that
were OK'd, about half were pornographic and half weren't.
BAIR incorrectly blocked photographs of Yellowstone, the
Baltimore waterfront, Snoopy, boats, sunsets, dogs,
vegetables and even a Wired News staff meeting.
Well, a Wired News staff meeting might well be viewed by many as
pornographic. Who did what to whom? Was it good for the others, too?
Exotrope officials say they plan to fix the errors within the
next month. BAIR works by funneling Web connections through
Exotrope's proxy server, which the company says is
malfunctioning.
I am counting on you, Declan, to do the follow-up in a month or two
which drives the stake through the heart of Exotrope.
--Tim May
--
-:-:-:-:-:-:-:
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
"Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Jolly Roger
At 10:19 AM -0700 6/13/00, Michael Motyka wrote: Personally, I think they ought to be tracked down and dealt with more directly. Cops who solicit illegalities need to be dealt with directly. But that's just my opinion. I think it should just be considered entrapment and made unusable in court. That would end the problem right there. That is the only acceptable way to treat entrapment. The only acceptable way to treat entrapment? I have several other methods which are acceptable in my moral universe: Firstly, prosecute those who entrap by committing crimes for the crimes. Cops who solicit to buy sex should be prosecuted thusly. Those who buy alcohol when underage are prosecuted thusly. Those who solicit bomb-making instructions are prosecuted under the Feinswine laws, if they are passed. The notion that cops can break the law by soliciting for sex and then be exempt from prosecution, or can buy drugs and be exempt from drug laws, is why we have so much entrapment. Secondly, there are more direct and final solutions to the problem of entrapment. Trusting the courts to throw out entrapments is a weak solution. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: MS-Nationalization By Thomas J. DiLorenzo
At 4:44 PM -0700 6/11/00, Lizard wrote: At 12:55 PM -0700 6/11/00, Tim May wrote: Apple would no doubt fail if IBM and Motorola stopped making PPC chips. This doesn't mean the government has any constitutional or moral authority to force IBM and Motorola to stay in this business. Which leads me to this question -- so why doesn't Bill just close up shop? He's got fifty+ billion dollars -- he couldn't spend it all in his lifetime if he tried. So why doesn't he just pull a John Galt and say, "Fine. I hereby close down Microsoft. We're out of business. No more monopoly. Have fun. I'm going to Disneyworld." Many reasons this cannot happen. In fact, I realize how stupid it is to even waste time listing them. Have a nice day. I'm assuming it's not that simple, that you can't just shut the doors and throw away the key. Can anyone confirm this? That's right, it's not that simple. Have a nice day. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: article
At 11:02 AM -0500 6/8/00, Cynthia Williams Wright wrote: Could you please e-mail me some information on the bill that "will harm children" but help pedophiles? I am doing an article on online pedophiles, and would appreciate any help you can give a.s.a.p. Thank you. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] We are no longer providing contact information for finding young lolitas for entertainment purposes. However, if you wish to register your daughter or son, providing they meet the age requirement of being under 10, please go to www.cluelessjournalists.org for details. If you are just another English major-turned-computer journalist, then fuck off. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: RSA fasion trends.
At 3:00 AM +1000 4/18/00, Julian Assange wrote: TRENDS - ENCRYPTION Byline: SUELETTE DREYFUS So what is hot in cryptowear? Look for ephemeral keys, template-less biometrics, sheer digital watermarks lined with a crinoline of crypto and au natural molecular computing. Sitting in a trendy Brunswick Street cafe, Duane revealed his predictions after jetting into Melbourne recently from RSA's headquarters in the Milan of the IT world, Massachusetts. ... Some of these, such as template-less biometrics, are so new they are little more than a theoretical sparkle in designers' imaginations, but they are moving fast. Others, such as digital watermarking, will be retro by the time they become widespread. They've existed for some time, but Duane predicts they may take off in a much larger way in future. ... Next season could also see a return to nature, with molecular computing used as a way to break cryptographic keys. The natural look is back in vogue among the large-lobed in other ways as well, with Duane openly sporting long hair in a pony tail. ``The only time I purposely tuck it in is when I'm riding my Harley,'' he said. I nominate this article as the most pretentious--or should I say "precious"?--mixing of metaphors seen in a major piece of reporting this year. This latest Dreyfus affair is tedious beyond words. No doubt she (or he) will be an honored guest and probably a speaker at the next CFP. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
