Blind Signature Patent Expiration Party this Saturday
Friends, colleagues, and co-conspirators, It has been 17 long years and now the time is finally here to celebrate at the: BLIND SIGNATURE PATENT EXPIRATION PARTY === WHAT: A party to celebrate the expiration of the Blind Signature patent. WHY: U.S. Patent 4,759,063 ("Blind Signature Systems") to David Chaum is the core invention enabling privacy-protecting electronic payment systems and credentials. It was a truly ingenious, ground-breaking contribution. Unfortunately the existence of the corresponding patent, which was notoriously difficult to license, prevented this great invention from receiving the wide use that it so very much deserved. For a copy of the patent, see http://www.pat2pdf.org/pat2pdf/foo.pl?number=4759063 Unlike copyrights these days, patents do expire. The blind signature patent will expire on July 19, 2005, next Tuesday. Since weekends tend to fit better with the schedules of potential party goers than weekdays, we are holding the party this Saturday instead. The 17 years that this patent has been in effect has been an awfully long time for the many of us that hoped to make use of this technology to help citizens to maintain privacy in the age of the Internet and the patent's expiration is a much overdue reason for celebration. WHO: If you know what blind signatures are you are invited. WHEN: This Saturday, July 16, starting at 1:00 PM PDT WHERE: Since the number of inquiries I received in response to the party pre-announcement exceed the maximum occupancy limit of my home and since the weather promises to be excellent, we will hold the party in a beer garden instead. Drinks are on me! We will meet at the Alpine Inn (aka Alpine Beer Garden) 3915 Alpine Road, Portola Valley, CA 94028 USA AWARDS: Those that can demonstrate that they have created a full system that makes significant use of the blind signature patent by 4 PM on Saturday will be invited to and receive a free dinner at the afterparty. So get coding! (Pr0duct Cypher, where are you)? A team of judges will determine if a particular system qualifies for the award. AFTERPARTY: A handful of us plan to have dinner at a swanky restaurant on patent-free Tuesday. Email me or talk with me at the party if you are interested in joining. Space is limited. You will have to pay for your own food at the Tuesday dinner unless you qualify for the award above or your name is on the blind signature patent. Looking forward to see you all this Saturday, --Lucky This email could have been PGP encrypted. If you already have a PGP key, please upload it to https://keyserver.pgp.com to enable all users of PGP Universal and PGP Desktop 9 to use your key. If you would like your key to be used only with the cypherpunks.to domain, please upload your key to this PGP Universal server by visiting the URL below. https://keys.cypherpunks.to/b/b.e?r=cypherpunks%40jfet.org&n=pk3p2YzQ7qdYMEhuETiSPg%3D%3D
Drug-traffickers' Trunk-mounted Evidence-ditching Rocket Fails to Take Off
My brother's summary, spoken by a Wile E. Coyote cartoon figure: "2 KY meth traffickers rigged up their car so if cops closed in a small rocket with their stash would launch itself from the trunk" "that never works" "meep meep" Fox News Story: http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,161609,00.html Drug Rocket Fails to Take Off Tuesday, July 05, 2005 Drug dealing really may be rocket science. Two accused methamphetamine traffickers apparently rigged up their car so that if cops closed in, a small rocket carrying their stash would pop up from the trunk and launch itself far from the long arm of the law. For some reason, the rocket never achieved liftoff when Missouri State Highway Patrol (search) officers pulled over Michael Ray Sullivan, 41, and Joseph C. Seidl, 39, both of Kentucky, on June 24 in Kingdom City. The $13,534 in cash in the 1990 Ford Thunderbird was interesting enough, Kansas City U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Don Ledford told the Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune. Far more intriguing was what was in the trunk: three dud pipe bombs and a "hobby-style" rocket, three to four feet long, all packed with meth worth up to $145,000. Ledford explained that a web of ropes and pulleys lifted the rocket into launch position when the trunk lid was opened. The rocket could then be ignited from inside the car using the dashboard cigarette lighter. Cops are pretty certain the rocket was meant to be an escape pod for the drugs, but Ledford diplomatically declined to speculate. "But they did have the meth inside the rocket," he admitted, "and it could be launched from inside the car." Thanks to Out There reader Jen J.
Re: Reverse Palladium?
At 11:47 AM 7/12/2005, Tyler Durden wrote: How secure can I make a Java sandbox from the rest of the network I'm on? Can I make it so that my network administrator can't see what I'm typing? In other words, a secure environment that's sitting on an insecure machine. There's the "network" and there's the computer. If you're on a computer you can't trust, you can't trust it. If you're the sysadmin for the box, and nobody else is, then you're only exposed to eavesdropping on the network. If you can't trust the sysadmins for the computer not to do keystroke logging and CarbonCopy your screen, you've got a much tougher threat model. If you've got a machine you're willing to trust, you can tunnel everything else you do through encrypted tunnels; the network administrator will be able to see where the outside of the outer tunnel is, if that bothers you. There are a number of SSL-based VPN tunnel products on the market, including some that just use the browser's SSL capabilities, some that use a browser with Java app clients, and some that use actual installed client software. Aventail is one vendor, Cisco's another, there are lots more, but I haven't seen any open-source server versions (e.g. Apache plugins), though some servers do at least run on Linux. Some of Aventail's products are made to run on a publicly-accessible machine, e.g. cybercafe model, and give you a "virtual desktop" that looks like your home system and clean up after themselves when you log off.