Re: why should it be trusted?
At 08:12 PM 10/22/00 -0700, James A.. Donald wrote: -- At 07:09 PM 10/22/2000 -0700, Nathan Saper wrote: I think the government has a right to do whatever it needs to do to maintain the health and well-being of its population. That is the purpose of the government. Then the government should be raiding your home to check on your consumption of chocolate, and spying on your messages to detect if you are secretly arranging for the purchase or sale of forbidden substances. Congratulations! You've finally discovered the Secret Ulterior Motive behind the Cypherpunks Grocery-Store-Frequent-Shopper Card Exchange Ritual, which is to discourage them from knowing who's *really* buying all that chocolate and beer. (We used to do it relatively often; now it's more of an occasional thing, especially since the Albertsons/AmericanStores merger means that Lucky no longer uses cards, but Safeway still does. Safeway started doing "Thank you for shopping at Safeway, Mr. Cypherpunki" a while back, and they're currently usually mispronouncing the person whose dietary habits I'm also disparaging. :-)
Re: why should it be trusted?
On Thu, 26 Oct 2000, James A. Donald wrote: on the whole I think you'll find few Brits who would give up the idea of the NHS. Stockholm syndrome. This particular argument works both ways and is exceptionally difficult to prove in either direction. It's not nearly as credible as the economic ones people seem to love, here. As for the WHO study, it indeed displays some queer characteristics: for instance, what on earth does mortality, per se, have to do with the quality of health care? It is true that better health care for a population, other things being equal, implies higher expected lifespan. This does not necessarily go the other way around. Some more specific measures based on mortality (like infant mortality, death from diseases related to affluency etc.) perhaps serve as decent indicators of the general quality of health care, but not the base measure. Sampo Syreeni [EMAIL PROTECTED], aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university
RE: why should it be trusted? TYPO!!
I wrote: [...] The solution to this problem is not to propose different ways to slice up the too-small pie - it's to expand the pie. The greater the wealth, the more people who can afford good care. People who are responsible for their own welfare (and enslaved to the welfare of ^NOT! others) have the best chance of acheiving wealth. Peter Trei
For small values of Ideal (was: Re: why should it be trusted?)
Nathan Saper wrote: Having socialized healthcare would be ideal. However, I think that "Having total gun control would be ideal," "Having self censorship would be ideal," "Having salary standardization would be ideal," and now: "Having socialized healthcare would be ideal." What next? "Having crypto export controls would be ideal"? If I set up a Killfilepunks list, will you migrate?
Re: why should it be trusted?
From: "Nathan Saper" [EMAIL PROTECTED] In a recent WHO study, the U.S. was ranked (IIRC) 15th in the world for healthcare (factoring in quality, availability, etc). This was behind many socialized healthcare countries, such as Canada. From memory. From my ass. I believe the US was ranked #37. The study seemed to rank countries based on some pretty useless things. For example, IIRC, it put a great deal of emphasis on relative levels of care within a country. Absolute or objective levels of care don't matter to the sick. That is why countries like Oman, Cuba, and Boobabooba outranked the US: almost everyone gets shitty, but equal, levels of care. Everyone gets to use that same needle. Also, it attempted to factor out the disabled, genetic freaks, the old and pathetic, etc. -- all of the people you care about. Chad can't afford to support these people, the US does, so it just wouldn't be fair if this were to be factored in. Those people just don't count!
Re: why should it be trusted?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Mon, Oct 23, 2000 at 08:37:42PM -0700, James A.. Donald wrote: At 09:07 PM 10/22/2000 -0700, Nathan Saper wrote: OK, granted, the government needs to be kept on a tight leash. Most people will not want the government breaking into their homes. However, I think most people would be willing to vote for a bill that would guarantee insurance for people with genetic abnormalities, even that does mean that some CEOs and stockholders will have less money in their already-full pockets. You cannot provide cheap insurance by punishing insurers, any more than you can provide cheap housing by punishing landlords. It has been tried. A law compelling insurance companies to insure the unhealthy will merely raise costs for the healthy, resulting in more people going uninsured. If you want to guarantee insurance for the unhealthy without ill effects the TAXPAYER has to pay, and I suspect that if this proposition was put to the public, enthusiasm would be considerably less. Indeed the Clintons did put something very like that proposition to the public, and there was little enthusiasm. Having socialized healthcare would be ideal. However, I think that You obviously know nothing about socialism or medicine. Go learn. -- A quote from Petro's Archives: ** "We forbid any course that says we restrict free speech." --Dr. Kathleen Dixon, Director of Women s Studies, Bowling Green State University
Re: why should it be trusted?
At 10:35 PM -0700 10/22/00, Nathan Saper wrote: This is true in theory. However, from what I have read, it appears that the care given to these people is far from the quality of care given to those who can pay. Also, many diseases require very expensive treatments, and I do not believe the hospitals are required to pay for these. As I wrote in my previous article, IT IS NOT TRUE that private hospitals must accept all those who appear at their doorstep. This would be a "taking," and is not constitutionally permissable. It may be that _some_ private hospitals take in _some_ emergency room cases, but they are not "required" to. This may have been a state law in Missouri, but I swear I heard reference to a similar law in Illinois. I would be surprised that it was not the case in the peoples republic of California. *ALL* hospitals are required to provide at least stabilization and transport to an appropriate facility to critically wounded or ill patients. The are not required to admit them for inpatient treatment, but they are not allowed to let them die in the street either. These kinds of laws are good in at least one respect--they make sure that if you forget your insurance credentials, or are otherwise unable to present them, you get treated anyway. -- A quote from Petro's Archives: ** "We forbid any course that says we restrict free speech." --Dr. Kathleen Dixon, Director of Women s Studies, Bowling Green State University
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?
On Sun, Oct 22, 2000 at 10:41:06PM -0700, Tim May wrote: 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? 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." I said healthcare. Not good healthcare, or even adaquate healthcare (though in fact substantially better than almost anyone got perhaps 50 years ago or most get in the third world today). With certain minor circumstantial exceptions people need not die without benefit of significant health care resources in this society. True they are unlikely to have received much proactive care (often a major problem for the system since treating them after the fact is greatly more expensive), and true that many poor and especially working poor uninsured people deny themselves treatment that might save their lives until its too late because they don't want to or even understand the need of allocating their very scarce resources to seeking medical treatment until they are very sick. But there is a minimal safety net in place, and while many do die from receiving inadaquate and too late treatment not very many are pushed out the door to die in the streets. But this raises the obvious question of what should society do, if indeed society as a whole 'should' do anything - I assert that no economic or political system is ever going to supply ideal "_good_" healthcare to those at the margins, so all of this is a question of how much freedom we are willing to give up and how great a burden we are willing to assume to push closer to adaquate health care for everybody. Certainly a classical libertarian society might supply a whole lot less health care of last resort to those too lazy, too stupid, too weak, too crippled by circumstance to take prudent steps to provide it for themselves. Some would even argue that this is appropriate. 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. I live in a very liberal state, where there are laws against this practice. I have heard it is more common elsewhere. 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.) OK, so you would turn them out to die in the streets. Or at least want to believe that if you didn't it had been a voluntary act of charity rather than something forced on you as a social obligation. 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? Whether or not you view this as bad depends on your very basic views about the social compact and fairness - is it just bad luck and tough sushi for the poor unfortunate or should we as a society offer at least some safe harbor for those who drew the short straws ? And if we do offer such, how much of our collective wealth should we spend on it - .005%, 0.5% 1 %, 5%, 35% ?And how should we decide this ? And what happens in a world in which the mechanisms by which we express such sentiments erode as states wither... -- Dave Emery N1PRE, [EMAIL PROTECTED] DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass. PGP fingerprint = 2047/4D7B08D1 DE 6E E1 CC 1F 1D 96 E2 5D 27 BD B0 24 88 C3 18
Re: why should it be trusted?
At 3:25 AM -0400 10/23/00, Dave Emery wrote: Whether or not you view this as bad depends on your very basic views about the social compact and fairness - is it just bad luck and tough sushi for the poor unfortunate or should we as a society offer at least some safe harbor for those who drew the short straws ? My opinion on this is: No, we should not, as a society, offer any "safe harbor to those that draw the short straws". If you (as an individual) feel that these people should be helped, then you should help them. You are of course welcome to join with other like minded people and form a "Indigent Aid Society" to help them in larger numbers. Myself, I feel no compulsion to help "people". My help is directed at individuals, whom I have personal knowledge of. I don't contract out my charity to some faceless bureaucrat. And if we do offer such, how much of our collective wealth should we spend on it - .005%, 0.5% 1 %, 5%, 35% ? And how should we decide this ? That one's easy. As much as each person wants to spend, individually decided. If you want to spend 90% of your wealth on this, that your business. And what happens in a world in which the mechanisms by which we express such sentiments erode as states wither... Before the state got into the "do-gooding" business, there were many more private charities. Most of them couldn't compete with the state-sponsored ones, for obvious reasons. -- -- Marshall "The era of big government is over." Bill Clinton, State of the Union Address, January 23, 1996 Marshall Clow MusicMatch mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: why should it be trusted?
At 11:36 PM -0700 on 10/22/00, Nathan Saper wrote: Then what is the purpose of our government? To confiscate taxes by force, of course. ;-). So long, Nathan, and thanks for all the red herring... Plonk! Cheers, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: Re: Re: why should it be trusted?
On Sat, 21 Oct 2000, petro wrote: How are you going to make sure that people do the things that make them healthy? Why should you? Whoever said effectiveness is a requirement? Believe it or not, not all people in this world are hardworking. Not all people in this world are willing to put forth much effort at all, especially for long term issues like health. I certainly am not. I worry about sickness when it comes, and if it's bad enough, suicide is painless. So how are you going to make sure that people do the things they need to do to keep them healthy? Pass laws? Usually people's decisions on matters related to health have little to do with the expected cost of getting ill. Not one of the people I know exercise to save money. They exercise to have fun, feel good, look good and to not get sick, which is generally unpleasant regardless of cost. Generally I know few people which are not in exceptional health. Sampo Syreeni [EMAIL PROTECTED], aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university
Re: why should it be trusted?
-- At 07:09 PM 10/22/2000 -0700, Nathan Saper wrote: I think the government has a right to do whatever it needs to do to maintain the health and well-being of its population. That is the purpose of the government. Then the government should be raiding your home to check on your consumption of chocolate, and spying on your messages to detect if you are secretly arranging for the purchase or sale of forbidden substances. That is one way of defining freedom. I view freedom as the right of people to live happy, productive lives. As contented sheep. Fine, so the insurance companies won't be considered "good." Who cares? The point is, people who need medical care would be getting it. We cannot provide all the medical care for everyone who might want it. The question then is who decides who lives and who dies? If the fortunate are somehow compelled to pay for the less fortunate, that apparatus of compulsion is going to decide whether you deserve your open heart surgery or other expensive treatment. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG GUBFD2UeVQbTblq9mDTKK3VT3Zb2kipPNZRPhilI 4bXMDF9BDJEBTLlQ+J9MAOym72PaOobmLE+ThdUZU
Re: why should it be trusted?
From: "Nathan Saper" [EMAIL PROTECTED] However, I think most people would be willing to vote for a bill that would guarantee insurance for people with genetic abnormalities, even My own aside, how many votes are required before my right to security in person and property should be violated? 50% + 1? We cannot provide all the medical care for everyone who might want it. The question then is who decides who lives and who dies? We could easily provide healthcare for every American citizen. Just raise taxes a bit, and cut out most of our military spending. Why only American citizens? There are entire countries whose populations are worse off than the most poorly ensured USAian. Doesn't your heart bleed for them? Regardless, don't go to the trouble of raising taxes and cutting military spending - it isn't needed. I can personally provide a some level of healthcare for every American citizen. I'm assuming quality of care isn't a consideration?
Re: why should it be trusted?
On Sun, Oct 22, 2000 at 08:53:59AM -0700, Nathan Saper wrote: In theory, fine. However, we live in a society where people are not automatically given healthcare. If you don't have insurance, and you don't have the money to pay for treatment, you're shit out of luck. If the insurance companies deny treatment to people who MAY develop a disease later, they are setting these people up to die without healthcare. Nobody dies without healthcare under our present system. 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. For the most part this treatment is funded by hospitals by hidden (and sometimes partly overt) charges built into their fee structure - in effect we already are paying a tax in our present private insurance systems and Medicare/Medicaid (and especially for private cash paying patients who pay full rate and don't get the deep discounts that Medicare and HMOs negotiate from providers) that provides this last gasp safety net coverage to the indigent. 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. Maybe I view things differently than you do. I just think that in a country as rich as ours, we can afford to keep our population healthy. -- Dave Emery N1PRE, [EMAIL PROTECTED] DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass. PGP fingerprint = 2047/4D7B08D1 DE 6E E1 CC 1F 1D 96 E2 5D 27 BD B0 24 88 C3 18
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: why should it be trusted?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Mon, Oct 23, 2000 at 01:10:58AM -0400, Dave Emery wrote: On Sun, Oct 22, 2000 at 08:53:59AM -0700, Nathan Saper wrote: In theory, fine. However, we live in a society where people are not automatically given healthcare. If you don't have insurance, and you don't have the money to pay for treatment, you're shit out of luck. If the insurance companies deny treatment to people who MAY develop a disease later, they are setting these people up to die without healthcare. Nobody dies without healthcare under our present system. 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. For the most part this treatment is funded by hospitals by hidden (and sometimes partly overt) charges built into their fee structure - in effect we already are paying a tax in our present private insurance systems and Medicare/Medicaid (and especially for private cash paying patients who pay full rate and don't get the deep discounts that Medicare and HMOs negotiate from providers) that provides this last gasp safety net coverage to the indigent. This is true in theory. However, from what I have read, it appears that the care given to these people is far from the quality of care given to those who can pay. Also, many diseases require very expensive treatments, and I do not believe the hospitals are required to pay for these. 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. I think that's it, basically. Maybe I view things differently than you do. I just think that in a country as rich as ours, we can afford to keep our population healthy. - -- Nathan Saper ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) | http://www.well.com/user/natedog/ GnuPG (ElGamal/DSA): 0x9AD0F382 | PGP 2.x (RSA): 0x386C4B91 Standard PGP PGP/MIME OK | AOL Instant Messenger: linuxfu -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.5 and Gnu Privacy Guard http://www.gnupg.org/ iD8DBQE5884h2FWyBZrQ84IRAki4AKCEWAeAaMNjG9REZmwGxacEP2Fe/ACgpWqM SzHxkpVTA0AVLvUY7LLD6zw= =E01B -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: why should it be trusted?
The Red Sed: On Fri, Oct 20, 2000 at 01:23:32AM -0700, petro wrote: Most children--which is where genetic "abnormalities" show up--are covered often sight unseen through their parents policies, and often before they are even conceived. OK. This lowers the amount of people the companies would be discriminating aginst. Therefore, the insurance company is saving less money. Therefore, we have more reason to force them to insure said people, if it affects them less. That is completely disconnected, and illogical. We have no reason to force insurance companies to do anything other than honor the contracts which they have signed. Medicine is not a commodity, but it's *still* a business. It has to be. Why does it have to be a business? Because everything is a business. Everything. -- A quote from Petro's Archives: ** "We forbid any course that says we restrict free speech." --Dr. Kathleen Dixon, Director of Women s Studies, Bowling Green State University
Re: why should it be trusted? (insurance)
Without massive employer-funded health care, most people would be more likely to pay for their routine costs directly and buy insurance for excessive costs. "Catastrophic" health insurance--insurance which covers things massive trauma (car accidents etc) or Cancer are pretty cheap. If one has the resources to pay for "routine" health care up to and including extensive surgery (say 20 to 40k), it can be a reasonable filler. Minor surgery is relatively cheap--IIRC my hernia repair was only about 5 to 7k in 1997--this is out of the reach of the lower half of the socio-economic scale, and it made me damn glad I had health insurance, but it's hardly something that most people *couldn't* pay off if they were so inclined. -- A quote from Petro's Archives: ** "We forbid any course that says we restrict free speech." --Dr. Kathleen Dixon, Director of Women s Studies, Bowling Green State University
Re: Re: why should it be trusted?
On Thu, 19 Oct 2000, Neil Johnson wrote: It's not a zero-sum game for the insurance companies. Most insurance companies make quite a bit of money investing premiums. Yes, and so could their clients if not doing business with the insurance companies. In addition, they spread the risk. They are betting that more people will stay well than get sick. Yes. And I'm not talking about people "engaging in risky behavior". I'm talking about someone who has a genetic predisposition for a disease THAT THEY HAVE NO ABILITY TO MITIGATE. Hey, I engage in risky behavior three times a week. I'm in an open relationship with a bisexual. I weigh nearly 400 pounds, eat lots of starchy and oily foods, and engage in rough sports. I had a broken foot a few years ago when I dropped a caber on my foot for example. I also go swimming naked in the pacific off the marin coast, where there are occasional sharks and the water is so cold that most normal people go into shock if they try it without a wetsuit. I could mitigate these risks, but I don't want to. But whether they're risks I could mitigate or not still has nothing to do with what level of risk is *REAL* in my life. Mitigable or not, these risks are real. So is the risk of someone who is born with a wonky gene that makes him or her susceptible to cancer. Why should that person, who has the same level of risk I do, get a substantially better deal than me? What financial motive would an insurance company have for offering two people with identical amounts of risk substantially different rates? If I am a bad risk because of a behavior I choose, then I am a bad risk and that affects the odds at which my health should be bet. If Alice is a bad risk because of a genetic predisposition to cancer, then she is a bad risk and that affects the odds at which her health should be bet. What's the disconnect here? Why do you think that the *causes* of risk are somehow more important in determining odds than the *fact* of risk? I have no problem charging someone who smokes, takes drugs, or over eats. THEY HAVE A CHOICE. We have a choice, but so what? Higher risk is higher risk. Choices have nothing to do with that. And there's no point in pretending that these "choices" are equally easy for everybody either. The biggest factor in determining risk for alcoholism is still heredity. If your parents were alkies, you're probably quite susceptible to it yourself. Likewise, neither of my parents was skinny nor celibate. Bear
Re: why should it be trusted?
On Wed, 18 Oct 2000, Marshall Clow wrote: So these people are entitled to something for nothing? (or in this case, $1500 of treatment for $1000 of premiums)? Why? Because keeping people operable longer makes for net savings for the society? This perhaps isn't a reason for *private* companies to issue insurance fairly, but is a clear incentive to the society to nevertheless maintain a public health insurance infrastructure. Following the same line of reasoning, it is beneficial for the society as a whole (whether through the government or through concerted action of individuals) to pressure any insurer to comply with this general goal. I think this can be accomplished without the Men with Guns as well. Sampo Syreeni [EMAIL PROTECTED], aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university
Re: why should it be trusted?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Wed, Oct 18, 2000 at 10:23:25PM -0700, Marshall Clow wrote: At 10:07 PM -0700 10/18/00, Nathan Saper wrote: On Wed, Oct 18, 2000 at 10:01:20PM -0700, Marshall Clow wrote: At 9:27 PM -0700 10/18/00, Nathan Saper wrote: On Wed, Oct 18, 2000 at 06:57:24PM -0700, Tim May wrote: At 5:48 PM -0700 10/18/00, Nathan Saper wrote: 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. Most insurance companies are worth millions, if not billions, of dollars, and they make huge profits. Insuring all of the people that they now deny based on genetic abnormalities would still allow them to make decent profits. So? What authority gets to decide what "decent" profits are? Businesses _should_ always seek to maximize their profits in the long term. My point is, it wouldn't be death for the business if they were forced to insure people with genetic abnormalities. You'd have to do more than blindly assert that before I would agree. Even if I was willing to concede that point, you still have skated around the "Who gets set up as arbiter of 'decent' profits" question. Maybe "decent profits" was bad word choice. Perhaps I should have said "insuring people with genetic abnormalities would not drastically effect the insurance company's bottom line." "Drastically" is, of course, qualitative, but I think it's fairly obvious whether or not a certain action is doing a terrible amount of damage to a company's profits. And many people are denied coverage outright, therefore removing the possibility of simply paying for their coverage. What is preventing them from simply paying for their treatment? Coverage is often cheaper than treatment. So these people are entitled to something for nothing? (or in this case, $1500 of treatment for $1000 of premiums)? That's the whole idea of insurance, isn't it? Why? - -- Nathan Saper ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) | http://www.well.com/user/natedog/ GnuPG (ElGamal/DSA): 0x9AD0F382 | PGP 2.x (RSA): 0x386C4B91 Standard PGP PGP/MIME OK | AOL Instant Messenger: linuxfu -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE57oqu2FWyBZrQ84IRAik/AKCVu2z0tYgOQB4Ag2SLVEMPd5aUMQCgtZy1 KVWniyItZBLzJg8WxM3WycE= =QBM+ -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: why should it be trusted?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Thu, Oct 19, 2000 at 01:23:19AM -0400, Steve Furlong wrote: Nathan Saper wrote: On Wed, Oct 18, 2000 at 06:36:52PM -0700, Tim May wrote: "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. 1) Insurance is a very profitable business. I don't feel sorry for a CEO of an insurance company making millions each year. They can afford to insure people that MAY develop certain conditions later in life. General Electric's Power Systems division is very profitable. Should it start giving away its stock in trade to poor nations which "need" an electric generation plant, regardless of the nation's prior mismanagement which led to its inability to pay? That's a different situation. Insurance isn't a product, it's a service. Like someone said in an earlier post, insurance is a gamble. People put in money so, in the event of a sickness, they get more out than they put in. Denying coverage tips the scale in favor of the insurance company. 2) Notice the "MAY" above. Insurance companies consider even the slightest risk grounds for denying coverage. Bull. The overweight still get coverage. I was referring specifically to genetic abormalities. 3) Your food analogy above is flawed for several reasons. a) If Bob has as much money as everyone else, he will be sold the food. b) If Bob, on the other hand, has a genetic abnormality that could later lead to heart disease, he can be denied health coverage regardless of his ability to pay the premium. c) In the food example, charities, etc. can help Bob out. In the insurance area, he has no such help to fall back on. In re b), Bob won't be denied health _care_, regardless of his genetic abnormalities or actual medical history, provided that he pays for it. Also, food and medical coverage are apples and oranges, to torture a metaphor. There is an upper limit to what people spend on food, even given unlimited resources. There seems to be _no_ upper limit on what people will spend on medical care. This is exacerbated when costs are shared. I agree on the comment about medical spending, as well as apples and oranges. As to care, as I've said a lot before, care is most often more expensive than coverage. In re c), what, you've never heard of free clinics? Hell, I've donated piles (in terms of my net worth) of cash to clinics, on the premise that helping to control VD will have a societal benefit in excess of many other uses of the money. For that matter, when my son was born I noticed that I had been assessed about $400 to help cover the medical costs of the indigent. (Which pissed me off, since I wasn't notified beforehand that the hospital would do that, nor given a chance to opt out, but that's another topic.) I've heard of free clinics. But they're extremely hard to find in most areas, and they are often overbooked. Sadly, you don't know enough to actually carry on a debate. Warmed-over socialist platitudes have been your stock in trade. You haven't answered a single one of my emails without including a personal attack of some sort. You're being an asshole, and that's not necessary. Wow, you haven't been reading c-punks long. If Tim makes a personal attack on you, it'll usually involve an observation that you should be killed. Yeah, I think I've gotten one of those. ;-) I would say that Tim's comment, above, is more an observation than an attack. I agree with him completely, except that he doesn't go far enough. That's fine. I have no problem with being disliked. I just think that having an attack in every message is a waste of bandwith. - -- Nathan Saper ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) | http://www.well.com/user/natedog/ GnuPG (ElGamal/DSA): 0x9AD0F382 | PGP 2.x (RSA): 0x386C4B91 Standard PGP PGP/MIME OK | AOL Instant Messenger: linuxfu -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE57owU2FWyBZrQ84IRAuBPAJ9VaMGDP6eI7areGoeW2Xc+aABwVACgmUsr JIZcvVSK3ibIfrqmfa+HMTo= =/r7b -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: why should it be trusted?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Thu, Oct 19, 2000 at 12:38:12PM +, Gil Hamilton wrote: Nathan Saper gropes: On Thu, Oct 19, 2000 at 01:02:44AM -0400, Steve Furlong wrote: Nathan Saper wrote: Nathan seems to be arguing that insurance companies should be forced to cover people at a rate to be set by someone other than the insurance company. Tim May objects to this plan. Close. I am arguing that insurance companies shouldn't be allowed to deny coverage based upon factors that the insuree does not have control over. For example, I smoke, so I really can't blame an insurance company for charging me extra, because that's a factor I have control over. So, by extension, people who are 98 years old should be able to purchase life or health insurance at the same rates as those who are 22 years old. After all, they have no control over their age. Your position is internally inconsistent as well as dishonest and unfair. If you believe that people are entitled to medical care simply because they exist, then at least admit that to yourself and advocate that government should provide it through tax collections. I have admitted that to myself. I support socialized healthcare. I just don't see us moving in that direction (unfortunately). The "Big Rich Insurance Company Who Can Afford It" is simply passing the costs on to the rest of us anyway. But why should this burden be placed on the managers and stock holders of the insurance company? It isn't *their* fault that the prospective insured has a genetic predisposition to heart disease (or whatever). No one forced them to create an insurance company (or to purchase insurance company stock). Again, the primary reason for having healthcare in the first place is not to make money. It is to keep people healthy. Most insurance companies are worth millions, if not billions, of dollars, and they make huge profits. Insuring all of the people that they now deny based on genetic abnormalities would still allow them to make decent profits. The poor old widow whose mutual fund owns the insurance company stock is being deprived of income thanks to your mandate. How is that fair? A small dip in stock prices vs. people dying because of lack of healthcare. For me, at least, it's easy to see which one is worse. And many people are denied coverage outright, therefore removing the possibility of simply paying for their coverage. Of course you said "coverage", not "care", but the alleged problem is that people can't get medical _care_. Who cares if they have _coverage_, so long as their medical needs are taken care of? Coverage is most often less expensive than care. Therefore, one may be able to afford the coverage, but not afford the care, if it ends up being required. Again, this is being dishonest. Coverage is less expensive than care only because *someone else is paying for it*. It is the care that is needed, not "coverage". Mandated "coverage" is simply care that someone else is being required to provide. Any insurance company obviously prefers to minimize "coverage" that *it knows* is going to require care to be paid for. OK, so what? Insurance exists so that people put in x dollars, and if they get sick, the insurer pays for their medical bills. That is the purpose of insurance. Again, I see that as being more important than the insurance company making huge profits. As I wrote before (like, a couple of hours ago), most of the people who insist on a right to "affordable" medical insurance seem to expect to get a lot more out of the insurance company than they put into it. They should just be honest and go on welfare if they're looking for a handout, rather than attempt to claim the moral high ground. Isn't this the whole idea of insurance? You pay them x dollars, and if you end up getting sick, they most likely have to pay more than x dollars to treat you. The insurers are banking on the fact that the majority of the people who have insurance don't get sick. So, yes, the whole idea of insurance is to get out more than you put in. No. The idea of insurance is to *insure* yourself (and family, etc.) against unexpected catastrophic losses by pooling risk. This is why the current American system where virtually everyone's insurance pays for virtually every visit to the doctor is such a bad idea. People should be paying for their ordinary, year-in year-out health care. Insurance should only enter the picture if "large" unexpected expenses are incurred. This type of insurance would have a huge positive effect on health care prices in this country. Prices keep spiraling upward because the individual doesn't have any incentive to control costs. The individual's only motivation is, as you stated, "get out more than you put in". Since the individual is not motivated to control costs,
Re: why should it be trusted?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Thu, Oct 19, 2000 at 12:25:55PM -0700, 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. I guess we do agree on this. [Hmm... I hadn't thought about the morality of terraserver.. where you can get pictures of your neighbors lots, taken by the govt] The problem is, corporations also control the media, so most people do not know about the bad shit some corporations are involved in. There is no obligation for media to tell the truth or all of what *you* deem the truth even when they *claim* to be telling the truth (e.g., news). The only thing they gamble is reputation. I never said they do have an obligation to tell the truth. I think they SHOULD, but they often don't. All I said was that, because the media often doesn't tell the whole truth, people don't know about bad stuff that corporations are doing. There is no obligation for Joe Sixpack to fund news sources he's not interested in, or viewpoints he doesn't subscribe to. The only relevent obligation is for *state* actors to do nothing. If you can't sell or distribute your bits to your satisfaction, blame the population. Similarly if you can't find what you want to buy: blame the population for not exerting sufficient demand. Round 'em up and send 'em to re-education camps. That oughta work. You may not like the results of living amongst this population who prefers football to deep reporting, but lack of coercion means none of your business. Finally, I asked, Are you against car insurers asking about your other genetic characteristics (e.g., sex)? And you replied: No, because they do not deny coverage based upon gender. But they *do* vary your rate with your sex. I shouldn't have to spell it out, but: Given finite individual resources, varying the costs with sex amounts to refusing coverage for some, based on sex. Where's your (misplaced, because a Y chromo *does* mess up your driving skills when under 25 :-) sense of injustice about this genetic discrimination? Your original question was "Are you against car insurers ASKING [my emphasis]" about gender. I'm not against them asking. I'm against them discriminating based on that information, however. - -- Nathan Saper ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) | http://www.well.com/user/natedog/ GnuPG (ElGamal/DSA): 0x9AD0F382 | PGP 2.x (RSA): 0x386C4B91 Standard PGP PGP/MIME OK | AOL Instant Messenger: linuxfu -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE58LkB2FWyBZrQ84IRAkTTAJ9UbwxOhWTciZ6DDpsDTKNJExSN4QCfW8LM gWCb2I+FL1Do1jjNS/RkieY= =BImJ -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: why should it be trusted?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Fri, Oct 20, 2000 at 01:23:32AM -0700, petro wrote: Most insurance companies are worth millions, if not billions, of dollars, and they make huge profits. Insuring all of the people that they now deny based on genetic abnormalities would still allow them to make decent profits. So? Where is it mandated that they cover those? In fact, display proof that they *DON'T*. I believe that currently, they do cover people with genetic abnormalities. However, they have been trying for quite some time to allow for discrimination based upon said abnormalities. Most children--which is where genetic "abnormalities" show up--are covered often sight unseen through their parents policies, and often before they are even conceived. OK. This lowers the amount of people the companies would be discriminating aginst. Therefore, the insurance company is saving less money. Therefore, we have more reason to force them to insure said people, if it affects them less. Also, people cannot simply create insurance companies. Breaking into the healthcare business is damn near impossible, unless you have established relationships inside the industry. No, you have to have (a) big chunks of assets, and (b) follow some *EXTREMELY* thick government rules. It's the government stupid. And many people are denied coverage outright, therefore removing the possibility of simply paying for their coverage. Huh? How does denial of coverage prevent them from paying? Oh, you must not have meant what you wrote. Like I've said before, people may be able to afford coverage without being able to afford the care. You must have meant "many people who are denied coverage are denied treatment since they don't have health care". Guess why? Government again. If I have a health care bill, and pay even a *TINY* bit on it--like $10 a month, the creditor cannot file negative reports against me, cannot come after me legally etc. even if I owed 20k in medical bills. (you do the math on how long it takes to pay off 20k at $10 a month). Therefore, the hospitals know that for anything less than life threatening treatment, it's a losing battle to provide treatment to those without the demonstrated means to pay. Medicine is not a commodity, but it's *still* a business. It has to be. Why does it have to be a business? - -- Nathan Saper ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) | http://www.well.com/user/natedog/ GnuPG (ElGamal/DSA): 0x9AD0F382 | PGP 2.x (RSA): 0x386C4B91 Standard PGP PGP/MIME OK | AOL Instant Messenger: linuxfu -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE58MBv2FWyBZrQ84IRAodQAJ9spTbVw/amKCcPVFvDoJzQ6MeO5gCgry1x DTZOue8kOe9jrc01n8M7Euw= =pWUy -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: why should it be trusted?
On Fri, 20 Oct 2000, Marshall Clow wrote: Because keeping people operable longer makes for net savings for the society? That's a nice belief. Can you show it to be true? In a society where a significant part of an individual's life is spent nonproductively and high productivity generally means high education and learned skills, extension of the individual's life significantly beyond the time required to learn these skills is a must in order for the average individual to break even with the cost of education and upbringing. Of course, this perhaps does not imply care of the elderly. This is not at issue here. This perhaps isn't a reason for *private* companies to issue insurance fairly, but is a clear incentive to the society to nevertheless maintain a public health insurance infrastructure. Rather, I would say that individuals should be able to decide on the level of health care that they are willing to pay for. Quite. I argue that should hold beyond their individual capability to pay for the care. Following the same line of reasoning, it is beneficial for the society as a whole (whether through the government or through concerted action of individuals) to pressure any insurer to comply with this general goal. Even if I conceded your premise (which I don't), I certainly don't believe that this is true. How is this? If the premise holds, it is beneficial to make health care ubiquitously available. This cannot be achieved if some people are allowed to opt out of the gamble. This is basically equivalent to "the end justifies the means". Which is pretty much what I'm after. How do you feel about forced sterilizations of mental patients and other "undesirables"? Society would benefit by not having them reproduce. It is far more effective to not put money into their sustenance early on. I think this can be accomplished without the Men with Guns as well. And now you've completely lost me. How would you compel people to pay taxes without a threat of violence? By making sure the people are completely dependent on the state, probably through some pretty unfair engineering of contracts you cannot avoid if you are to stay alive. Sampo Syreeni [EMAIL PROTECTED], aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university
Re: why should it be trusted?'
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Fri, Oct 20, 2000 at 04:14:29PM -0400, Matt Elliott wrote: As to care, as I've said a lot before, care is most often more expensive than coverage. Clearly this can't be true or every health insurance company would be going out of business. Coverage has to be more expensive than care of they wouldn't be in the business of providing coverage. They make a profit because most people with insurance end up not getting terribly sick. - -- Nathan Saper ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) | http://www.well.com/user/natedog/ GnuPG (ElGamal/DSA): 0x9AD0F382 | PGP 2.x (RSA): 0x386C4B91 Standard PGP PGP/MIME OK | AOL Instant Messenger: linuxfu -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE58MIo2FWyBZrQ84IRAsrVAKCjUfRWclcmIA1UTjhveo5T4QLgAwCfar/x HR+cVHcxKOfI8dl3HUiym34= =p15d -END PGP SIGNATURE-
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: why should it be trusted?
At 05:50 PM 10/17/00 -0700, Nathan Saper wrote: On Tue, Oct 17, 2000 at 12:07:00PM -0400, David Honig wrote: Not yet. But I believe the UK takes samples of everyone arrested (not necessarily guilty) of minor crimes, and some US states and cities do or periodically propose doing this or more. The next question is: What do they do with this info? Insurance companies and the like use it to justify discrimination against people likely to develop certain medical conditions. 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)? The point is, the government is being used to do corporations' dirty work. What a government can legitimately do should be reigned in by a constitution. And no more. And I'm much less afraid of a government that is (in theory, if not always in practice) somewhat connected to the people What are you smoking? (representatives want to get reelected, after all) than I am a corporation that can do basically whatever the fuck it wants, with little or no hope of punishment. Corps have to please their customers or go extinct. Real simple. Only govt can print money. You *should* be concerned about various individuals (legislators, their wives, cultists, etc.) trying to get the government to use its violence to accomplish their way. You *shouldn't* be concerned about the _mutually consensual interactions_ of the individuals (and voluntary associations thereof, like corps.) within your borders. Government should *only* be concerned with nonconsensual interactions. dh
Re: why should it be trusted?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Wed, Oct 18, 2000 at 09:10:27AM -0700, David Honig wrote: At 05:50 PM 10/17/00 -0700, Nathan Saper wrote: On Tue, Oct 17, 2000 at 12:07:00PM -0400, David Honig wrote: Not yet. But I believe the UK takes samples of everyone arrested (not necessarily guilty) of minor crimes, and some US states and cities do or periodically propose doing this or more. The next question is: What do they do with this info? Insurance companies and the like use it to justify discrimination against people likely to develop certain medical conditions. 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. The point is, the government is being used to do corporations' dirty work. What a government can legitimately do should be reigned in by a constitution. And no more. So are you saying that there is nothing wrong with the government doing the corporations' dirty work? And I'm much less afraid of a government that is (in theory, if not always in practice) somewhat connected to the people What are you smoking? Cigarettes. (representatives want to get reelected, after all) than I am a corporation that can do basically whatever the fuck it wants, with little or no hope of punishment. Corps have to please their customers or go extinct. Real simple. Only govt can print money. The problem is, corporations also control the media, so most people do not know about the bad shit some corporations are involved in. You *should* be concerned about various individuals (legislators, their wives, cultists, etc.) trying to get the government to use its violence to accomplish their way. You *shouldn't* be concerned about the _mutually consensual interactions_ of the individuals (and voluntary associations thereof, like corps.) within your borders. Government should *only* be concerned with nonconsensual interactions. dh - -- Nathan Saper ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) | http://www.well.com/user/natedog/ GnuPG (ElGamal/DSA): 0x9AD0F382 | PGP 2.x (RSA): 0x386C4B91 Standard PGP PGP/MIME OK | AOL Instant Messenger: linuxfu -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE57kTJ2FWyBZrQ84IRAoehAJ9Z2wVyycQKkorEchtHzqvZmejeowCfcsmd 556CP7OG1KdnBJM0dU/V9kU= =HIdC -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Re: why should it be trusted?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Tue, Oct 17, 2000 at 11:53:36PM -0700, Tim May wrote: 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. 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 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. Wait until you finally grasp the full implications of crypto anarchy. - -- Nathan Saper ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) | http://www.well.com/user/natedog/ GnuPG (ElGamal/DSA): 0x9AD0F382 | PGP 2.x (RSA): 0x386C4B91 Standard PGP PGP/MIME OK | AOL Instant Messenger: linuxfu -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE57kfU2FWyBZrQ84IRAsydAJ9AAj8WFVKM0WvkGHHK0wnN9+DipwCcDlqA Rr6p2gKyfRsjtfYwzQpPJmU= =oF56 -END PGP SIGNATURE-
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: Re: Re: why should it be trusted?
--- Original Message - From: "Tim May" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "Yardena Arar + Christian Goetze" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: "Nathan Saper" [EMAIL PROTECTED]; "Cypherpunks" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2000 9:00 PM Subject: CDR: Re: Re: why should it be trusted? 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." But the Bob has no control of his risk (genetics), or at least not yet :). The insurance company does. I don't have a problem with insurance companies raising rates for people who smoke, are overweight (cough, cough), or have high cholesterol (cough, cough, cough). That's behavior that can be changed. Neil M. Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.interl.net/~njohnson PGP Key Finger Print: 93C0 793F B66E A0C7 CEEA 3E92 6B99 2DCC
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: Re: Re: Re: why should it be trusted?
- Original Message - From: "Tim May" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; "Yardena Arar + Christian Goetze" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: "Nathan Saper" [EMAIL PROTECTED]; "Cypherpunks" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2000 9:56 PM Subject: CDR: Re: Re: Re: why should it be trusted? 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. As a matter of fact I'm studying it right now (for my Software Engineering Economics Class). Heaven forbid Here's a good quote even: "The use of dollar profit as the only criterion to be used in decision making often leads to decisions with good short-term profit properties, but poor social outcomes for the people involved (and often, as a result, poor long-term profit prospects)." . . . "The net value approach used in this book assumes that ALL [Author's emphasis, not mine] the relevant components of effectiveness--employee's need-fulfillment, customer's good will, users' information privacy, operator's ease of use--have been translated into dollar values and incorporated as such in the total value function". (p 212 - Software Engineering Economics by Barry W. Boehm) In other words the Alice should take into account more than just what it is going to risks/cost to treat Bob. But most companies are going to only consider their short-term interests (There's that "Tragedy of the commons" again) unless they are forced otherwise. Neil M. Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.interl.net/~njohnson PGP Key Finger Print: 93C0 793F B66E A0C7 CEEA 3E92 6B99 2DCC
Re: why should it be trusted?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Wed, Oct 18, 2000 at 10:01:20PM -0700, Marshall Clow wrote: At 9:27 PM -0700 10/18/00, Nathan Saper wrote: On Wed, Oct 18, 2000 at 06:57:24PM -0700, Tim May wrote: At 5:48 PM -0700 10/18/00, Nathan Saper wrote: 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. Most insurance companies are worth millions, if not billions, of dollars, and they make huge profits. Insuring all of the people that they now deny based on genetic abnormalities would still allow them to make decent profits. So? What authority gets to decide what "decent" profits are? Businesses _should_ always seek to maximize their profits in the long term. My point is, it wouldn't be death for the business if they were forced to insure people with genetic abnormalities. Many businesses fall into the "short term trap", which maximizes profits for a few years, which then fall off in the long term, leading to lower overall profits. Leaving "money on the table", as it were. It is my _opinion_ that insurance companies, by inserting themselves into the legal system, and seeking to make themselves a necessity, are well down that road. And many people are denied coverage outright, therefore removing the possibility of simply paying for their coverage. What is preventing them from simply paying for their treatment? Coverage is often cheaper than treatment. - -- Nathan Saper ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) | http://www.well.com/user/natedog/ GnuPG (ElGamal/DSA): 0x9AD0F382 | PGP 2.x (RSA): 0x386C4B91 Standard PGP PGP/MIME OK | AOL Instant Messenger: linuxfu -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE57oGg2FWyBZrQ84IRAoa4AJ4h558s/rHYjObvSIkkUNXpRzMGPgCfabMR mo7uvyjHRZhmSk1Z3Em9O/c= =GObv -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: why should it be trusted?
At 10:07 PM -0700 10/18/00, Nathan Saper wrote: On Wed, Oct 18, 2000 at 10:01:20PM -0700, Marshall Clow wrote: At 9:27 PM -0700 10/18/00, Nathan Saper wrote: On Wed, Oct 18, 2000 at 06:57:24PM -0700, Tim May wrote: At 5:48 PM -0700 10/18/00, Nathan Saper wrote: 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. Most insurance companies are worth millions, if not billions, of dollars, and they make huge profits. Insuring all of the people that they now deny based on genetic abnormalities would still allow them to make decent profits. So? What authority gets to decide what "decent" profits are? Businesses _should_ always seek to maximize their profits in the long term. My point is, it wouldn't be death for the business if they were forced to insure people with genetic abnormalities. You'd have to do more than blindly assert that before I would agree. Even if I was willing to concede that point, you still have skated around the "Who gets set up as arbiter of 'decent' profits" question. And many people are denied coverage outright, therefore removing the possibility of simply paying for their coverage. What is preventing them from simply paying for their treatment? Coverage is often cheaper than treatment. So these people are entitled to something for nothing? (or in this case, $1500 of treatment for $1000 of premiums)? Why? -- -- Marshall "The era of big government is over." Bill Clinton, State of the Union Address, January 23, 1996 Marshall Clow MusicMatch mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: why should it be trusted?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Mon, Oct 16, 2000 at 05:57:25PM -0400, David Honig wrote: At 01:37 AM 10/16/00 -0400, Nathan Saper wrote: On Sun, Oct 15, 2000 at 07:11:19PM -0700, James A.. Donald wrote: Have you been sealed in a box the last ten years? Companies may send you junk mail. Governments will confiscate your property and put you in jail,. Companies are wanting to keep records of genetic information and other HUGE infringments on privacy. Sure, right now, the bigger risk is the government (what with Carnivore and all), but I'd say that in less than a decade, global corporations will be much more powerful than any government. Already, with WTO/NAFTA/etc. regulations, corporations are often outside of the control of governments. Hilarious. You make JD's point. A company just wants to estimate the cost to insure you. A government wants to take your DNA at a traffic stop and run it against their collection so they can arrest you. When do cops take DNA at traffic stops? Even if they do (which I haven't heard of, but I could be wrong), the trend right now is more corporate power, less governmental power. As I said before, we are already seeing this trend, what with corporations able to circumvent countries' environmental codes and whatnot. It will only get worse. Then you aren't paying attention. Corporations have *NO* power over you that doesn't come from the barrel of a government gun. -- A quote from Petro's Archives: ** Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1st Inaugural
Re: why should it be trusted?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Mon, Oct 16, 2000 at 11:53:26PM -0400, Steve Furlong wrote: "Riad S. Wahby" wrote: Nathan Saper [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Huh? Tarquin Fintimlinbin-Whinbimlim-Bus Stop F'Tang F'Tang Olé Biscuit-Barrel? Uh, what? This is a reference to a Monty Python sketch. We must now convene the Cypherpunks Repulsive Activities Panel to evaluate Mr. Saper's fitness not only to read the Cypherpunks list but to have an Internet presense at all. Not recognizing a Monty Python sketch?! The mind wobbles. And Python is my favorite scripting language, too. I really need to rent some videos or something... I'd suggest "Cryptic Seduction". -- A quote from Petro's Archives: ** Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1st Inaugural
Re: why should it be trusted?
At 12:27 AM -0700 10/17/00, Kerry L. Bonin wrote: And yet ciphers are a significant target of the NSA. Sure, they devote significant resources to exploiting weaknesses in key management, but ciphers are a primary target. Many people who discuss the capabilities of the NSA do not use proper methodology in extrapolating their technical capabilities. General purpose computers and supercomputers are not well suited to attacking ciphers - custom silicon is the best means. For a message encrypted (or signed, a related problem) with a PKS cipher, recovering the plaintext involves factoring the modulus...so far as we know. This factoring may be done with conventional computers, special-purpose computers, or even exotic computers (tanks of DNA computers, billions of Net-connected computers, superconducting geodes orbiting around Neptune, quantum computers, whatever.) (Note that I am assuming here a pure PKS/RSA cipher, with no use of IDEA or 3DES or AES, etc. This is feasible for short messages. ) A look at the work factors (cf. Rivest's paper of circa 1993-4, or Schneier's book, or any of several other books, or one's own calculations) will show the pointlessness of throwing more computer power at sufficiently large moduli. Absent a breakthrough in factoring (and I mean a _major_ breakthrough, not a polynomial factor speedup), a modulus of thousands of decimal digits will never be factored. The "RSA-129" challenge becomes the "RSA-1000" challenge. Moore's Law won't do any good, nor will using ASICs or gate arrays or even nanotechnology. A quantum computer _might_ make a difference (though this is unproven). Extrapolate capabilities from the EFF DES crack project and you are somewhat closer (1536 ASIC w/ 24 cores/ASIC yielded 4.52 days/crack of 56 bit keyspace), then take into consideration the advantages of using more sophisticated semiconductor processes (ECL 15 years ago, GaAs on Sapphire today) and the higher clock rates that go with that (40MHz to well 1GHz), and rerun your numbers. Instead of a small cabinet, fill floors of buildings with these machines, and you have realtime cracking farms. Please spend a bit of time calculating what these "cracking farms" do for factoring very large numbers. (Or even for cracking 3DES.) Look, no one has any doubt that NSA and probably other intelligence agencies have built gate-array-based DES-cracking machines. This was implicit in Diffie and Hellman's paper on cracking DES, a paper published twenty-some years ago. And of course people we know have built DES-cracking machines of their own. But a DES-cracker is not a 3DES-cracker. I hope the math of this is known to all readers. And it is especially not a machine for factoring 3000-digit numbers. Talking about SOS and ECL and 1 GHz and all is nonsensical. All of those technologies are as nothing when in comes to problems with work factors exponential in key length! The exact point at which brute force becomes economically infeasible depends on technologies, improvements in algorithms, etc., but the broad outlines remain as described. It should be noted that increasing the keyspace isn't a magic protection implying the heat entropy of the universe prevents a crack - the NSA has been playing with Feistel networks since before most cryptographers even knew about DA, not to mention the possibilities of many other unknown weaknesses in Feistel networks being known to the NSA. As for my own comments, I wrote layout and design tools used on these NSA custom chips in the mid 80's, certified for use with the "NSA Standard Cell Library" by their chip designers (they were just one of the customers of the CAD/CAM/CAE software I worked on back then...) Then I'd have to say your analytical abilities are shallow. If you think one of these ciphers with work factors exponential in modulus size (or "key length," approximately) will fall to custom chips, you don't understand exponential time/space. I don't think its unreasonable to extrapolate that a sufficiently high priority message can be cracked by the NSA in near realtime, regardless of the cipher strength used, without significant knowledge of the nature of the plaintext. And you believe this? I'd imagine most attacks focus on key management, but anyone serious about the game will have obscene numbers of gates chewing on ciphertext. Please read up on work factors. Here's something from one of the PGP FAQs, http://www.uk.pgp.net/pgpnet/pgp-faq/faq-appendix2.html#2.5.1 --begin excerpt-- Here's a table from Applied Cryptography, referenced with an unpublished paper (as of Feb. 1995) by Andrew Odlyzko "Progress in Integer Factorization and Discrete Logarithms" Mips years required to factor a number with the GNFS: BitsMips-years 512 30,000 768 2*10^8 10243*10^11 12801*10^14 15363*10^16 20483*10^20 --end excerpt-- Good luck with your PALs and gate arrays. Have fun. Near realtime cracking. Sure.
Re: why should it be trusted?
At 8:50 PM -0700 on 10/16/00, Nathan Saper wrote: I'm not claiming to be stating facts. Ah. :-). Cheers, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: why should it be trusted?
At 01:18 AM 10/17/00 -0700, Tim May wrote: For a message encrypted (or signed, a related problem) with a PKS cipher, recovering the plaintext involves factoring the modulus...so far as we know. This factoring may be done with conventional computers, special-purpose computers, or even exotic computers (tanks of DNA computers, billions of Net-connected computers, superconducting geodes orbiting around Neptune, quantum computers, whatever.) [snip] A look at the work factors (cf. Rivest's paper of circa 1993-4, or Schneier's book, or any of several other books, or one's own calculations) will show the pointlessness of throwing more computer power at sufficiently large moduli. Absent a breakthrough in factoring (and I mean a _major_ breakthrough, not a polynomial factor speedup), a modulus of thousands of decimal digits will never be factored. The "RSA-129" challenge becomes the "RSA-1000" challenge. Moore's Law won't do any good, nor will using ASICs or gate arrays or even nanotechnology. A quantum computer _might_ make a difference (though this is unproven). Rivest and Schneier's work factor discussions assume brute force or streamlined brute force such as GNFS. These remain exponential in time. Now hypothesize the effect a new factoring or Feistel cipher attack would have on these tables. Too many crypto pundits spout extrapolations of exponential work factor as proof that these ciphers are unbreakable. These are merely postulates based on an assumption of a sort that has generally proven wrong throughout the history of science. "X requires Y, but Y is impossible, so X is impossible." Until Z comes along, and 20 years later its demonstrated in science or math classrooms as yet another example of bad logic. Talking about SOS and ECL and 1 GHz and all is nonsensical. All of those technologies are as nothing when in comes to problems with work factors exponential in key length! The exact point at which brute force becomes economically infeasible depends on technologies, improvements in algorithms, etc., but the broad outlines remain as described. One of the points I believe is sorely missing in these discussions is how important "improvements in algorithms" can be. In the narrowest sense, I agree with your statements - but I have also seen what elegant alternative approaches can do to systems that were presumed to be vulnerable only to brute force, and I've also seen how nicely they may be placed into custom hardware. Then I'd have to say your analytical abilities are shallow. If you think one of these ciphers with work factors exponential in modulus size (or "key length," approximately) will fall to custom chips, you don't understand exponential time/space. I'm not stating that brute force silicon can be scaled to the point it can attack a 256 bit key in reasonable time today. What I do know is that alternative attacks, implemented in silicon or sapphire, are another matter. Your position is predicated on the assumption that because no such attacks are in the public domain, none must exist. I believe this is faulty logic, and advances a common, yet dangerous position. I don't think its unreasonable to extrapolate that a sufficiently high priority message can be cracked by the NSA in near realtime, regardless of the cipher strength used, without significant knowledge of the nature of the plaintext. And you believe this? Most people who have worked with military crypto systems do, off the record. The difference between what is public and what has been developed with decades of unlimited resources is staggering. How many cryptographers or discrete math experts work in the public domain? Now how many work for the NSA? That's how many orders of magnitude? And how many orders of magnitude difference in budgets, ect., even with bureaucratic and civil service overhead. Call it threat analysis - I think it is reasonable to assume they know a few tricks that aren't public yet. And any trick related to factoring or Feistel networks is sufficient to obsolete those "age of universe" extrapolations.
Re: why should it be trusted?
Nathan Saper wrote: Even if they do (which I haven't heard of, but I could be wrong), the trend right now is more corporate power, less governmental power. As I said before, we are already seeing this trend, what with corporations able to circumvent countries' environmental codes and whatnot. It will only get worse. it is not corporations *ignoring* government powers (or "circumventing" them, what a nice term in light of DMCA). it is corporations using government as their executive branch. take a look at DMCA, take a look at the european proposal I have in my hands (gotta search that link, it's document # 9512/00) - tell me they were NOT written by corporate lawyers.
Re: why should it be trusted?
On Mon, Oct 16, 2000 at 09:46:25PM -0700, Nathan Saper wrote: Fine. My basis for my claim is that the NSA is the best funded and best equiped electronic intelligence agency in the world, and they have employed some of the smartest people in the world. Sorry, but this is hand-waving. There are smart people outside the NSA and there is money outside the NSA. Fine, it's a claim made by the clueless. I'm not claiming to be something other than clueless, but I am claiming to have not meant what I sent to this list. Again, not a good proofreader. Again, sue me. No, you'll just be ridiculed instead. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and you have not provided it. Think of it from a longtime cypherpunk's perspective: We see people come in here and say the same thing as you every month or so, and offer much in the way of not-very-informed speculation but little in the way of proof. -Declan
Re: why should it be trusted?
Could a factoring breakthrough happen to convert this exptime problem to polynomial time? Maybe. I said as much. Is it likely? See discussions on progress toward proving factoring to be NP-hard (it hasn't been proved to be such, though it is suspected to be so, i.e., that there will never be "easy" methods of factoring arbitrary large numbers). Geee... Since when are problems "proven" to be NP-hard?? Go back to your favorite undergrad institution and take a course on computational complexity again. You don't appear to be familiar with the literature. I suggest you do some reading. Yeah, right. And you are familiar.
RE: Re: why should it be trusted?
Kerry L. Bonin writes: Most people who have worked with military crypto systems do, off the record. The difference between what is public and what has been developed with decades of unlimited resources is staggering. How many cryptographers or discrete math experts work in the public domain? Now how many work for the NSA? That's how many orders of magnitude? And how many orders of magnitude difference in budgets, ect., even with bureaucratic and civil service overhead. IMHO you haven't done much budgeting or defense work. I worked on a project secret enough that I still can't mention the name of the project (although the name itself is unclassified -- my association with the project was classified, however). Budgeting is still a factor in defense work. Your messages start to sound like the crypto that Tom Clancy uses in his novels, crypto that always annoys me because it is so fake. I agree that the NSA may have a few tricks up its sleeve on top of some pretty powerful specialized cracking hardware, but we are talking about needing heavy wizardry to do real-time cipher cracking, not just some parlor tricks that drop the work factor by 1000 or so. For the NSA to generally do what you propose, they would need some exponential-time methods, methods that would drop the work factor by 10^78 (or something like that). It is just a whole lot easier to do a black-bag job on a North Korean embassy (for example) than to directly attack their crypto. That is why defense companies do background checks, that is why some areas of military facilities are guarded by soldiers with guns, and that is why the NSA tried to conceal all evidence of their existence for a while. Crypto is just one part of a unified security policy -- sometimes not a very important part at that. Mark Leighton FisherThomson Consumer Electronics [EMAIL PROTECTED] Indianapolis, IN, USA "Display some adaptability." -- Doug Shaftoe, _Cryptonomicon_
Re: why should it be trusted?
On Tue, 17 Oct 2000, Kerry L. Bonin wrote: Extrapolate capabilities from the EFF DES crack project and you are somewhat closer (1536 ASIC w/ 24 cores/ASIC yielded 4.52 days/crack of 56 bit keyspace), then take into consideration the advantages of using more sophisticated semiconductor processes (ECL 15 years ago, GaAs on Sapphire today) and the higher clock rates that go with that (40MHz to well 1GHz), and rerun your numbers. Instead of a small cabinet, fill floors of buildings with these machines, and you have realtime cracking farms. You have realtime cracking farms for *some* ciphers. I have always figured it this way: They get two orders of magnitude for being "ahead of the curve" in knowledge and technique. They get five orders of magnitude of speed for custom hardware. They get seven orders of magnitude for massively parallel hardware. 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. As for my own comments, I wrote layout and design tools used on these NSA custom chips in the mid 80's, certified for use with the "NSA Standard Cell Library" by their chip designers (they were just one of the customers of the CAD/CAM/CAE software I worked on back then...) Interesting. I thought that was the sort of thing that you could tell the people who'd done it because they were the ones who weren't allowed to talk about it. Bear
Re: why should it be trusted?
At 11:58 AM 10/16/00 -0700, Joshua R. Poulson wrote: Isn't utterly obvious that the NSA, just any decent person, compartmentalizes its security so that if one system were broken, the other systems would not necessarily be broken? Very well said. They also benefit from security via obscurity (to *some* extent) because they have nice men with fully automatic weapons to enforce said NDAs.
RE: Re: why should it be trusted?
At 10:06 AM 10/17/00 -0500, Fisher Mark wrote: It is just a whole lot easier to do a black-bag job on a North Korean embassy (for example) than to directly attack their crypto. That is why defense companies do background checks, that is why some areas of military facilities are guarded by soldiers with guns, and that is why the NSA tried to conceal all evidence of their existence for a while. Crypto is just one part of a unified security policy -- sometimes not a very important part at that. I don't dispute this, my choice of words was "Sure, they devote significant resources to exploiting weaknesses in key management." "Rubber hose" and "black bag" cryptanalysis have a long history of being far more cost effective than brute force.
Re: why should it be trusted?
At 08:24 AM 10/17/00 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote: On Tue, 17 Oct 2000, Kerry L. Bonin wrote: Extrapolate capabilities from the EFF DES crack project and you are somewhat closer (1536 ASIC w/ 24 cores/ASIC yielded 4.52 days/crack of 56 bit keyspace), then take into consideration the advantages of using more sophisticated semiconductor processes (ECL 15 years ago, GaAs on Sapphire today) and the higher clock rates that go with that (40MHz to well 1GHz), and rerun your numbers. Instead of a small cabinet, fill floors of buildings with these machines, and you have realtime cracking farms. You have realtime cracking farms for *some* ciphers. I have always figured it this way: They get two orders of magnitude for being "ahead of the curve" in knowledge and technique. They get five orders of magnitude of speed for custom hardware. They get seven orders of magnitude for massively parallel hardware. 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. As for my own comments, I wrote layout and design tools used on these NSA custom chips in the mid 80's, certified for use with the "NSA Standard Cell Library" by their chip designers (they were just one of the customers of the CAD/CAM/CAE software I worked on back then...) Interesting. I thought that was the sort of thing that you could tell the people who'd done it because they were the ones who weren't allowed to talk about it. Under some circumstances, I guess they aren't. In my case, my employment NDA was conventional and very simple, and we regularily used our certification as a marketing point with defense contractors. In this case, I don't mind mentioning what I did, I just make sure I'm careful not to say more than we used in marketing. This doesn't violate anything I signed.
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.
Re: why should it be trusted?
- Original Message - From: John Young [EMAIL PROTECTED] The question occurs: did PK crypto get leaked on purpose? How was it done? It may not be exactly what you had in mind, but I personally _observed_ the "leak" (to the public) of RSA, but I simply didn't recognize what it was at the time! I believe it was late January/early February 1977 (but I could be off a couple of months) and it was the beginning of my second semester of my freshman year at MIT. Due to the location of my dorm, "East Campus," I frequently walked by the mathematics department and its bulletin boards on the main floor. Usually bulletin boards like that are filled with grades, test results, problem set answers, and things like that. But at this point, they had something that wasn't identifiably of any of these categories. "Exponentiation", "modulo arithmetic," "prime numbers", etc. I wish I could see the thing again. I didn't spend a lot of time on it, at the time, but I would have if I'd known what it was. Jim Bell
Re: why should it be trusted?
On Tue, 17 Oct 2000, Jordan Dimov wrote: Could a factoring breakthrough happen to convert this exptime problem to polynomial time? Maybe. I said as much. Is it likely? See discussions on progress toward proving factoring to be NP-hard (it hasn't been proved to be such, though it is suspected to be so, i.e., that there will never be "easy" methods of factoring arbitrary large numbers). Geee... Since when are problems "proven" to be NP-hard?? Go back to your favorite undergrad institution and take a course on computational complexity again. Um, "NP-hard" just means that it's polynomial time reducible to any problem in NP (or perhaps the other way around, I always get the directions mixed up). It is fairly straightforward to show this - you exhibit a reduction to another problem you already know to be NP-hard. The "original" such problem is bounded halting : given a TM description M, an input x, and a polynomial bound p(n), does M halt on input x in p(length(x)) time? The famous theorem of Cook consists exactly of a reduction relating SATISFIABILITY and bounded halting. That's annoying. But once it's done you can give reductions to SATISFIABILITY instead. See Garey Johnson's book for more examples. Put another way, showing a problem is NP-hard doesn't actually show that it is "hard." It just shows that the problem is no easier than any problem in the class NP. It could still be the case that P = NP, in which case there is a rash of suicides in the crypto world... At the same time, it is believed unlikely that factoring is NP-hard. This is because "factoring" (the function problem 'find the factors of n'; not sure exactly how to formalize as a decision problem) is in NP intersect coNP. If factoring is NP-hard, then NP = coNP. This is believed to not be the case (but of course not proven). In addition, it's not at all clear how you could solve arbitrary SAT instances given an oracle for factoring. Try it and see. You don't appear to be familiar with the literature. I suggest you do some reading. Yeah, right. And you are familiar. He has the outline right, if not all the details. -David
Re: why should it be trusted?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Tue, Oct 17, 2000 at 12:50:36AM -0700, petro wrote: Hash: SHA1 On Mon, Oct 16, 2000 at 05:57:25PM -0400, David Honig wrote: At 01:37 AM 10/16/00 -0400, Nathan Saper wrote: On Sun, Oct 15, 2000 at 07:11:19PM -0700, James A.. Donald wrote: Have you been sealed in a box the last ten years? Companies may send you junk mail. Governments will confiscate your property and put you in jail,. Companies are wanting to keep records of genetic information and other HUGE infringments on privacy. Sure, right now, the bigger risk is the government (what with Carnivore and all), but I'd say that in less than a decade, global corporations will be much more powerful than any government. Already, with WTO/NAFTA/etc. regulations, corporations are often outside of the control of governments. Hilarious. You make JD's point. A company just wants to estimate the cost to insure you. A government wants to take your DNA at a traffic stop and run it against their collection so they can arrest you. When do cops take DNA at traffic stops? Even if they do (which I haven't heard of, but I could be wrong), the trend right now is more corporate power, less governmental power. As I said before, we are already seeing this trend, what with corporations able to circumvent countries' environmental codes and whatnot. It will only get worse. Then you aren't paying attention. Corporations have *NO* power over you that doesn't come from the barrel of a government gun. That's like saying that the person with the power in a police department is the street cop, because he's the one doing the actual arrest. The one calling the shots is the one to be afraid of. - -- Nathan Saper ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) | http://www.well.com/user/natedog/ GnuPG (ElGamal/DSA): 0x9AD0F382 | PGP 2.x (RSA): 0x386C4B91 Standard PGP PGP/MIME OK | AOL Instant Messenger: linuxfu -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE57O3B2FWyBZrQ84IRAkfnAJwJuqxPFtdIlrJ7Ee+2hB++51qAwgCgoOuE dejIUnLjrzh+NkDDWYS7ZQQ= =87v6 -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: why should it be trusted?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Tue, Oct 17, 2000 at 02:30:10PM +0200, Tom Vogt wrote: Nathan Saper wrote: Even if they do (which I haven't heard of, but I could be wrong), the trend right now is more corporate power, less governmental power. As I said before, we are already seeing this trend, what with corporations able to circumvent countries' environmental codes and whatnot. It will only get worse. it is not corporations *ignoring* government powers (or "circumventing" them, what a nice term in light of DMCA). it is corporations using government as their executive branch. And in many cases, governments are contributing to their own demise. IE, the creation of NAFTA and WTO, both U.S. inventions, which severely limit government powers in dealing with coporations. take a look at DMCA, take a look at the european proposal I have in my hands (gotta search that link, it's document # 9512/00) - tell me they were NOT written by corporate lawyers. Of course they were. Just about everything is. - -- Nathan Saper ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) | http://www.well.com/user/natedog/ GnuPG (ElGamal/DSA): 0x9AD0F382 | PGP 2.x (RSA): 0x386C4B91 Standard PGP PGP/MIME OK | AOL Instant Messenger: linuxfu -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE57PC12FWyBZrQ84IRAqjKAJoDX2IbdexFhjnQgNsiDrdjDj7xfwCgwDbb Al+j/yuXQwxbjMT5CXWxY+E= =o4ru -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: why should it be trusted?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Tue, Oct 17, 2000 at 10:38:57AM -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote: On Mon, Oct 16, 2000 at 09:46:25PM -0700, Nathan Saper wrote: Fine. My basis for my claim is that the NSA is the best funded and best equiped electronic intelligence agency in the world, and they have employed some of the smartest people in the world. Sorry, but this is hand-waving. There are smart people outside the NSA and there is money outside the NSA. Understood. But the NSA's budget is somewhat higher than most crypto think-tanks. Fine, it's a claim made by the clueless. I'm not claiming to be something other than clueless, but I am claiming to have not meant what I sent to this list. Again, not a good proofreader. Again, sue me. No, you'll just be ridiculed instead. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and you have not provided it. Why aren't people understanding that I'm not saying that the NSA has found a miraculous way to break ciphers? They may have, I don't know. The point is, when I said they could break "ciphers," I should have said "cipher implementations." I.E. software that does cryptography. Software is damn near always buggy. Look, people, you can continue to ridicule me for what I said earlier, but it would be a waste of time. We're essentially agreeing. Think of it from a longtime cypherpunk's perspective: We see people come in here and say the same thing as you every month or so, and offer much in the way of not-very-informed speculation but little in the way of proof. -Declan - -- Nathan Saper ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) | http://www.well.com/user/natedog/ GnuPG (ElGamal/DSA): 0x9AD0F382 | PGP 2.x (RSA): 0x386C4B91 Standard PGP PGP/MIME OK | AOL Instant Messenger: linuxfu -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE57PJH2FWyBZrQ84IRApy8AJ41kUmWG4IrRjI8ZB1PrwFsvTZ7IgCgthRM nKECOGNb9Oq2VObLgcD+cbU= =dQJx -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Re: why should it be trusted?
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 wasended in the last round of "Compassionate Conservatism"). We will be passing this information onto your brothers, sisters and otherrelatives insurance companies so they can require their sterilization. Frankly, your entire family tree needs to be "pruned" to coin a phrase. If you disagree with this decision you can appeal by our completely fair and unbiased arbitration process of course." Neil M. Johnson[EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.interl.net/~njohnsonPGP Key Finger Print: 93C0 793F B66E A0C7 CEEA 3E92 6B99 2DCC - Original Message - From: Allen Ethridge To: Cypherpunks Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2000 10:20 PM Subject: CDR: Re: why should it be trusted? On Tuesday, October 17, 2000, at 08:19 PM, Tim May wrote:At 5:50 PM -0700 10/17/00, Nathan Saper wrote:On Tue, Oct 17, 2000 at 12:07:00PM -0400, David Honig wrote: Not yet. But I believe the UK takes samples of everyone arrested (not necessarily guilty) of minor crimes, and some US states and cities do or periodically propose doing this or more.The next question is: What do they do with this info? Insurancecompanies and the like use it to justify discrimination against peoplelikely to develop certain medical conditions.Are you claiming that DNA collected by the police is then given to insurance companies?An audacious claim. Do you evidence to support this extraordinary claim?I will be very interested to hear which communities, which states, are doing this. So will many journalists, I hope.On the other hand, having heard that even getting a simple blood or saliva sample requires court action, I expect you are once again merely hand-waving.In the UK? I heard that in one community in the UK, in order to catch arapist or somesuch, the police went around collecting DNA samplesand arresting anyone who refused. After all, only someone with somethingto hide would refuse. Of course, this was television.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 surethat the insurance companies won't opt you out when they get a goodlook at your DNA?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. But I'm surprised that you'er so ignorantof cooperation between government and corporations. Maybe youdon't actually work for a living. You are aware of drug testing in thework place, aren't you?
Re: why should it be trusted?
Could a factoring breakthrough happen to convert this exptime problem to polynomial time? Maybe. I said as much. Is it likely? See discussions on progress toward proving factoring to be NP-hard (it hasn't been proved to be such, though it is suspected to be so, i.e., that there will never be "easy" methods of factoring arbitrary large numbers). Geee... Since when are problems "proven" to be NP-hard?? Go back to your favorite undergrad institution and take a course on computational complexity again. Are you literate? -- A quote from Petro's Archives: ** Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1st Inaugural
Re: why should it be trusted?
Merkle does not seem to be the kind of person who either would be
working for the NSA or whom the NSA would pick to be a conduit for
leaked secrets.
3. Ditto in spades for Whit Diffie. And Martin Hellman was, at that
time, an active anti-war activist ("Beyond War"). Seems unlikely
that NSA would pick them.
Ah, but that's what /they/ WANT us to think...
(yes, I'm joking.)
(Or maybe I'm a NSA plant cleverly disguised to something
that I can't explain or I'll have to kill myself...)
--
A quote from Petro's Archives: **
Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government
of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?
Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let
history answer this question. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1st Inaugural
Re: why should it be trusted?
P.S. I too would be interested in documented cases where DNA collected by the police was given to insurance companies. It's (apparently) England where there is wide spread DNA collection for use in finding certain types of criminals. In England both the Police and the Health Care System are run by the government, so in a sense the "Insurance Company" already has it. They also can't do anything about it since they have to cover everyone. Note: I am not claiming that the Police share the DNA with the Health Care Providers, but once the database is there... -- A quote from Petro's Archives: ** Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1st Inaugural
Re: why should it be trusted?
--
At 12:34 PM 10/17/2000 -0700, Tim May wrote:
3. Ditto in spades for Whit Diffie. And Martin Hellman was, at that
time, an active anti-war activist ("Beyond War"). Seems unlikely
that NSA would pick them.
To put this in simple terms. A smart person with a modest computer,
familiar with the long history of code creation and code breaking, can
create a code that a much smarter person with a vastly more powerful
computer cannot break.
The codes we are using were created by smart people. We know these
people. They are unlikely to be part of a vast conspiracy to put something
over us.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
HL2kYDppyJqeq3voMaoHBsK9A7bIEHXh3K/JS6d+
4eN6Rd5zjWoFZUJ+lf+iltc3DF4g2a6Pa/Wt11mcc
Re: why should it be trusted?
From: "Nathan Saper" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Already, with WTO/NAFTA/etc. regulations, corporations are often outside of the control of governments. Huh? Tarquin Fintimlinbin-Whinbimlim-Bus Stop F'Tang F'Tang Olé Biscuit-Barrel?
Re: why should it be trusted?
I don't know much about crypto politics, but... isn't it utterly obvious that the mere fact that the NSA suggest a certain algorithm (say Rijndael) for a national standard and recomends its use internationally imply that they have a pretty darn good idea (if not actual technology) on how to break it efficiently? I just don't see why else they would advocate its use. After all isn't the fact that NSA could break DES since the 70's the reason for the 'success' of DES? Isn't utterly obvious that the NSA, just any decent person, compartmentalizes its security so that if one system were broken, the other systems would not necessarily be broken? Also, compromise of the other systems would not be publicized, necessarily, and they are smaller and more easily replaced with new systems. --jrp
Re: why should it be trusted?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Mon, Oct 16, 2000 at 02:03:03AM -0400, Me wrote: From: "Nathan Saper" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Already, with WTO/NAFTA/etc. regulations, corporations are often outside of the control of governments. Huh? Tarquin Fintimlinbin-Whinbimlim-Bus Stop F'Tang F'Tang Olé Biscuit-Barrel? Uh, what? - -- Nathan Saper ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) | http://www.well.com/user/natedog/ GnuPG (ElGamal/DSA): 0x9AD0F382 | PGP 2.x (RSA): 0x386C4B91 Standard PGP PGP/MIME OK | AOL Instant Messenger: linuxfu -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.3 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE566PJ2FWyBZrQ84IRAq+3AJ9Q8dZk8OXBW6hItT2n3QeJaAwShQCgv3Hh f+58eXGuEfkFGGK1BwjiFSM= =0cjg -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: why should it be trusted?
-- At 02:34 PM 10/15/2000 -0700, Nathan Saper wrote: IMHO, the NSA has enough expertise and technology to crack just about any cipher out there. James A. Donald: No it does not. The expertise of the NSA, great though it is, is small compared to the expertise outside the NSA. At 10:26 PM 10/15/2000 -0700, Nathan Saper wrote: Assuming we can evaluate accurately the magnitude of what goes on inside the NSA... I know vastly more about cryptography than you do, and people who know vastly more about cryptography than I are confident that codes that pass lengthy peer review by themselves and people as good as they are, are unlikely to be broken by the NSA. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG ZlLhlzxncCnQOkHB8te81wDKtqWhcCTT3ldo+CKM 4lKVCVGVGO8ePP0CTWjDpfM+MInzJaH477ddm+DDY
Re: why should it be trusted?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Mon, Oct 16, 2000 at 11:53:26PM -0400, Steve Furlong wrote: "Riad S. Wahby" wrote: Nathan Saper [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Huh? Tarquin Fintimlinbin-Whinbimlim-Bus Stop F'Tang F'Tang Olé Biscuit-Barrel? Uh, what? This is a reference to a Monty Python sketch. We must now convene the Cypherpunks Repulsive Activities Panel to evaluate Mr. Saper's fitness not only to read the Cypherpunks list but to have an Internet presense at all. Not recognizing a Monty Python sketch?! The mind wobbles. And Python is my favorite scripting language, too. I really need to rent some videos or something... - -- Nathan Saper ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) | http://www.well.com/user/natedog/ GnuPG (ElGamal/DSA): 0x9AD0F382 | PGP 2.x (RSA): 0x386C4B91 Standard PGP PGP/MIME OK | AOL Instant Messenger: linuxfu -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.3 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE569fq2FWyBZrQ84IRAjcfAKCrqDdIevqBOeZCANPYeOZ1vN36/gCeLiUQ nHDIUHrR1YSv7IbNY0Z7kZI= =AuKL -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: why should it be trusted?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Sun, Oct 15, 2000 at 07:11:19PM -0700, James A.. Donald wrote: At 02:34 PM 10/15/2000 -0700, Nathan Saper wrote: IMHO, the NSA has enough expertise and technology to crack just about any cipher out there. No it does not. The expertise of the NSA, great though it is, is small compared to the expertise outside the NSA. Assuming we can evaluate accurately the magnitude of what goes on inside the NSA... As much as that may suck, there isn't a whole lot we can do about it. Besides, in the new world of globalization, I think we should be worrying more about corporations than about the NSA. Have you been sealed in a box the last ten years? Companies may send you junk mail. Governments will confiscate your property and put you in jail,. Companies are wanting to keep records of genetic information and other HUGE infringments on privacy. Sure, right now, the bigger risk is the government (what with Carnivore and all), but I'd say that in less than a decade, global corporations will be much more powerful than any government. Already, with WTO/NAFTA/etc. regulations, corporations are often outside of the control of governments. James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG qZj5j+f7JSR/ABzZK5+/yir7dimu3IsDLh8h4sB/ 48gAnJ2OI1E8YcgQ/re3gj59q4FMPy3wGT4nB6PZ8 - -- Nathan Saper ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) | http://www.well.com/user/natedog/ GnuPG (ElGamal/DSA): 0x9AD0F382 | PGP 2.x (RSA): 0x386C4B91 Standard PGP PGP/MIME OK | AOL Instant Messenger: linuxfu -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.3 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE56pFK2FWyBZrQ84IRAtzmAJ9NGTMPIMOCPDq+nuQV3mHiRcsFkwCfS7D0 jyJtiC7IzbFCkffQGrbfvH8= =hy30 -END PGP SIGNATURE-
