Re: expiring bearer documents
At 01:59 PM 3/26/04 -0500, R. A. Hettinga wrote: At 10:14 AM -0800 3/26/04, Major Variola (ret) wrote: The point is that the asset (a performance) which the bearer-document (ticket) grants access to expires. I think that's actually orthogonal to the ticket itself expiring. Okay. The inverse, maybe. No, they're orthogonal. You can have a persistant asset, your access to which expires; and you can have an ephemeral asset, access to which is persistant. Maybe you're talking about a derivative then. Nope. And, like a 10 year treasury note, appreciate with age. Isn't that the opposite of what you just said? Merely an example of an asset which gains value in a known way, the opposite of an asset which loses value in known way. The point is that any anonymous/finder's-spenders document is a form of cash; but some of these grant access to time-varying value. (My insight prompted by learning that its legal to resell tickets if you go through a licensed reseller. My impression had been that all such transactions were called scalping and called illegal (despite their being mutually voluntary) by the current regime.) (The interesting theme is that the properties of ordinary cash are separable and in some cases modifiable, as in the above time-sensitive cash or the finders-not-spenders variant I once described here, viz: One could create anonymous cash with the property that its *not* finder's-spenders because it has a PIN (basically a stored-value card); and that it would be recoverable if the anonymity were lost. )
Re: corporate vs. state
R. A. Hettinga (2004-03-26 12:41Z) wrote: At 7:20 AM + 3/26/04, Justin wrote: Those nasty latin words are ceteris paribus. Thank you. On a network full of experts the price of error is bandwidth. There's no reason to get all sarcastic. For all I knew you could have unintentionally mistyped it, the error not reflecting on your knowledge but on your keyboard. I'd just rather some ignorant boob doesn't read that and start using the incorrect form. Hell, there are legions of morons using in nomine patri, et fili, et spiritu sancti because they think they heard that in Boondock Saints. -- If you don't do this thing, you won't be in any shape to walk out of here. Would that be physically, or just a mental state? -Caspar v. Tom, Miller's Crossing
Anonymizer employees need killing
Anonymizer is working with the FBI on international blackmail cases - no subpoena required! From http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/36485.html : To download the online picture, he used the Anonymizer.com service, believing the companys privacy policy would protect him. Not so. Dutch police worked closely with the US company and the FBI to track him down. He was caught red-handed last year when he withdrew the money from a cash machine using his copy of the credit card. Which just goes to show that even criminal masterminds can make simple mistakes. The error, experts say, could have been easily avoided if the blackmailer had visited an internet cafe to download the encoded picture, rather than using his own PC. What's more, he paid for the Anonymizer service through Paypal, giving his personal email address. Fuck these sell-outs.
Re: Anonymizer employees need killing
On Fri, Mar 26, 2004 at 01:32:43AM -0500, An Metet wrote: From http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/36485.html : To download the online picture, he used the Anonymizer.com service, believing the companys privacy policy would protect him. Not so. Dutch The article got it wrong. He used Surfola. They've since corrected it.
Re: corporate vs. state
Harmon Seaver wrote: If a member of a club, to which you belong, commits an act of violence, are you liable for that act? No, but if the club, as an entity, does such, you should be. If the corporation pollutes, all and sundry owners and employees should be equally liable. Or maybe liability adjusted to investment or wage, What exactly do you mean when you say that the club as an entity commits an act? That the club/corporation assembled its members into some kind of Voltron super-mecha-bot, which went on a rampage through the rainforests of Tokyo? A corporation is not a physical entity. It is abstract, a name for a group of people. A corporation can no more act as an entity, than cybershamanix.com or Islam or the cypherpunk movement. Employees or members of those groups can act; people can claim to act in the name of those groups. But that is not the same thing as the group itself acting as an entity. What you really mean is that if some employees of a corporation commit a crime, you'd like to see the other employees punished also. Guilt by association. Many in the US government are pushing the idea that an abstract entity is a concrete being that can commit crimes and be punished. And not just the War On Terror; all these conspiracy to provide material support and jihad training charges are about building a case against some arbitrary group, and then arguing that the accused is liable for crimes committed by others associated with that group. When Tim May puts three rounds in the base of Bob Hettinga's geodesic skull, the feds kicking in your door will tell you that The Cypherpunks did it. Be sure to remind them that you deserve equal punishment. i.e., the biggest stockholders and highest paid employees get the longest sentences. The concept that no one is actually responsible for the criminal acts of a corporation is patently absurd. limited liability doesn't shield employees or agents of a company from punishment for crimes they commit. It serves to prevent one employee from being punished for the actions of another.
Re: corporate vs. state
On 26 Mar 2004, Frog wrote: Harmon Seaver wrote: If a voluntary association injures me, Associations - corporate or otherwise - are abstract, intangible entities. They don't perform actions. People do. Corporations act as legal persons - they can enter into contracts, own assetts, sue people, etc. The problem emerges when a corporation enters into battle with an individual - it's pretty hard to fight a lawsuit when the person on the other side of the table has billions of dollars, thousands of lawyers, and is willing and able to protract the battle over dozens of years. It's even worse when your opponent has the resources to lobby to change laws. Can you say RIAA?
RE: the Black Bloc Corporation
What you are asking about (at Tort in any event) is the legal doctrine of respondeat superior (let the master answer) making the master liable for certain acts of the servant. An employer is therefore typically liable for injury to person or property resulting from acts of an employee (See Generally, Black's Law Dictionary). There are lots of parallel ways to impose criminal liability in the same fashion. The government's favorite is generally the rather notorious concept of conspiracy. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Major Variola (ret) Sent: Friday, March 26, 2004 12:02 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: the Black Bloc Corporation At 12:28 AM 3/26/04 -0600, Harmon Seaver wrote: On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 09:43:53PM -0800, Major Variola (ret) wrote: If a member of a club, to which you belong, commits an act of violence, are you liable for that act? No, but if the club, as an entity, does such, you should be. The club are protesters wearing black. Some protesters threw bricks. You're busted for their actions.
RE: the Black Bloc Corporation
At 12:17 PM -0600 3/26/04, Black Unicorn wrote: respondeat superior He's back. Kewl... 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: Anonymizer employees need killing
On Mar 26, 2004, at 9:13, petard wrote: On Fri, Mar 26, 2004 at 01:32:43AM -0500, An Metet wrote: From http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/36485.html : To download the online picture, he used the Anonymizer.com service, believing the companys privacy policy would protect him. Not so. Dutch The article got it wrong. He used Surfola. They've since corrected it. Of course, anyone trusting their lives liberty to these commercial ip addx obfuscators are incredibly stupid anyway. Anonymizer states plainly that they store usage logs usually for 48 hours and will use them to combat spam or other abuses of netiquette. Even if they didn't state it, how can you stake your life on them not doing so? Any company that /can/ comply with a court order to reveal your identity, probably won't need a court order to be convinced to do so. Just as a point of curiosity (because I think it's irrelevant, for the reason above), An Metet, how are you sure there was no subpoena or court order involved? --bgt
Re: Anonymizing service employees rat out extortionist
At 08:16 AM 3/26/2004, Eric Tully wrote to the Cypherpunks list From The Register: To download the online picture, he used the anonymising Surfola service (and not Anonymiser.com as we mistakenly wrote in our initial report - apologies to all concerned - Ed), believing the company's privacy policy would protect him. So now I don't know what to believe. Either Anonymizer was never involved... or they don't want it known that they sold out so they asked for a retraction. Duhhh.. www.Surfola.com is a competing service, run by different people. You don't ask for a retraction that names somebody else unless it was somebody else who did it, or at least you don't do so with the expectation that you'll _get_ the retraction as opposed to getting flamed in public. Surfola's privacy policy does say that they won't ever, at any time, for any reason, give your name, residence address, or email address to any third party. I guess we know how much to trust that, though strictly speaking, it doesn't say they won't give out IP addresses, and at least one of the articles said that the Feebs could track him down because he didn't have the sense to use an internet cafe instead of connecting from home. (On the other hand, it said he paid for the anonymization service using Paypal and giving his own email address, so it's possible that Surfola _did_ rat him out in ways that contradict their privacy policy.) Also, the original anonymous posting said no subpoena involved, but didn't indicate that they knew this was true. It sounded like it might have been correct, but might not. Now, this kind of application of Blacknet is the sort of thing that gives privacy protection a bad name - the guy certainly deserved to be caught and busted, as well as deserved to have Darwin remind him that he wasn't as bright as he thought he was But Surfola's privacy policy shouldn't be making promises that it can't keep, or that it doesn't intend to keep. It appears to be based on a BellSouth DSL line in/near Jacksonville, FL, which means that Kris is subject not only to warrants, but also subpoenas, FISA Secret Court Gag-Ordered Subpoenas, Patriot Act secret gag-ordered requests for assistance from Homeland Security, legal or illegal wiretaps on anything unencrypted, and any fishing trips that the local police want to take (at least if he's not running encrypted disk partitions.) Its privacy policy ought to reflect that, even if such things aren't particularly enforceable. Bill Stewart
