Re: comfortably numb

[Dave Howe]

Major Variola (ret) wrote:
t 11:22 PM 10/1/04 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote:
In the US its generally illegal to tattoo someone who is drunk.
Not sure about that - certainly its illegal in the UK to tattoo for a 
number of reasons, but the drunkenness one usually comes down to "is not 
capable of giving informed consent"
Not sure it would be illegal for someone to agree to the tattoo, then 
indulge in "dutch courage" before going though with it.

Re: Foreign Travelers Face Fingerprints and Jet Lag

[Bill Stewart]

At 07:22 AM 10/3/2004, Steve Furlong wrote:
On Sun, 2004-10-03 at 05:18, Peter Gutmann wrote:
> The US now has the dubious distinction of being more obnoxious to get 
through
> the borders than the former East Germany (actually even without this 
measure,
> the checks had become at least as obnoxious as the East German ones).  I
> wonder whether the next step will be building a wall...
There's already a wall / fence built to keep Mexicans out.
Reign in the overheated rhetoric. The East German state built their wall
to keep the East Germans from leaving, while the US policies are meant
to keep out a demonstrated threat.
They're primarily intended to create a climate of fear and dependence
and reassure the American public that the government's in charge.

Bill Stewart  [EMAIL PROTECTED] 

A Proposed Nomenclature for the Four Horseman of The Infocalypse

[R. A. Hettinga]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

I've been talking about this for the last decade, and never found a
reference on the web whenever I was thinking about it. Thanks to
Google, it was well within my prodigiously diminished attention span
this morning.

Given the events on the net over the past few years, I figure we
might as well have fun with the idea. Humor is good leverage, and
these days we need *lots* of leverage.

In arbitrary order (in other words, *I* chose it. :-)), and with
apologies to Toru Iwatani, by way of Michael Thomasson at
, here
it is:


A Proposed Nomenclature for the Four Horseman of The Infocalypse

   Horseman Color  Character   Nickname

1  TerrorismRedShadow  "Blinky"
2  NarcoticsPink   Speedy  "Pinky"
3  Money Laundering Aqua   Bashful "Inky"
4  Paedophilia  Yellow Pokey   "Clyde"

It is acceptable to refer to a horseman by any of the above, i.e.,
"Horseman No. 1", "The Red Horseman", "Shadow", or "Blinky".

Apparently there was a, um, pre-deceased, dark-blue ghost, used in
Japanese tournament play, named "Kinky", I leave that particular
horseman for quibblers.


Cheers,
RAH

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-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
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: Foreign Travelers Face Fingerprints and Jet Lag

[Justin]

On 2004-10-03T13:32:36-0500, J.A. Terranson wrote:
> 
> The US *is* the Fourth Reich.

Personally, I will take what comes.

-- 
The old must give way to the new, falsehood must become exposed by truth,
and truth, though fought, always in the end prevails.  -- L. Ron Hubbard 

RE: Spotting the Airline Terror Threat

[Tyler Durden]

"DiDomenica has first-hand experience of the effectiveness of the system.
He was using his own observation techniques - called BASS (Behavior
Assessment Screening System) - last year when he saw man acting oddly near
the checkpoint and stopped him. The suspect passenger turned out to be an
agent from the Department of Homeland Security who had been trying to test
the system by sneaking a prohibited device onto a plane."
Come on. Variola or May or somebody wrote this shit, I'm no fool. Actually, 
it's quite hilarious. I couldn't have done any better myself.

-TD

From: "R. A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Spotting the Airline Terror Threat
Date: Sun, 3 Oct 2004 11:37:57 -0400
Wherein the TSA thinks they can observe a lot by watching...
Cheers,
RAH
---

 Saturday, Oct. 02, 2004
Spotting the Airline Terror Threat
TIME exclusive: A new airport security system soon to be tested will rely
on human judgment
By  SALLY B. DONNELLY/WASHINGTON
 TIME exclusive: A new airport security system soon to be tested will rely
on human judgment  The most dangerous threat to commercial aviation is not
so much the things bad people may be carrying, but the bad people
themselves. That refrain heard constantly from airline security experts
over the past three years appears to have finally been heeded by the
Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Aviation sources tell TIME
that the TSA plans to address the problem by launching its own passenger
profiling system. The system known as SPOT (Screening of Passengers by
Observation Techniques) relies more on the human dimension in detecting
threats, and is to be tested at two northeastern airports starting later
this month.
 "This is a radical change to aviation security," says Sgt. Peter
DiDomenica, the Massachusetts State Police officer who developed the
racially-neutral profiling program in place at Boston's Logan Airport, on
which SPOT is based. "This is a very subtle but very effective program."
 Unlike the TSA's recently announced program to use computer databases to
scan for suspicious individuals whose names occur on passenger lists, SPOT
is instead based squarely on the human element: the ability of TSA
employees to identify suspicious individuals by using the principles of
surveillance and detection. Passengers who flag concerns by exhibiting
unusual or anxious behavior will be pointed out to local police, who will
then conduct face-to-face interviews to determine whether any threat
exists. If such inquiries turn up other issues of concern, such as travel
to countries like Afghanistan, Iraq or Sudan, for example, police officers
will know to pursue the questioning or alert Federal counter-terrorism
agents.
 DiDomenica has first-hand experience of the effectiveness of the system.
He was using his own observation techniques - called BASS (Behavior
Assessment Screening System) - last year when he saw man acting oddly near
the checkpoint and stopped him. The suspect passenger turned out to be an
agent from the Department of Homeland Security who had been trying to test
the system by sneaking a prohibited device onto a plane.
 Although the profiling programs are aimed primarily at stopping
terrorists, they have had other benefits. The Massachusetts State Police
have arrested about 20 people for infractions ranging from being in the
country illegally to failing to answer outstanding warrants for various
offenses.
 The TSA plans to test SPOT for 60 days before committing to taking it
nationwide, eventually to all of the country's 429 commercial airports.
--
-
R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
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'
_
Don’t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! 
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/

Re: Foreign Travelers Face Fingerprints and Jet Lag

[Adam Back]

I don't know if my info is still current (and I did not read the
article), but the last time I went to the US (early this year) my H1B
was no longer in effect (I quit microsoft last year, and H1B visas are
tied to employer), and I did not get fingerprinted.

However they had a camera and fingerprinting equipment, and notice
saying that if you _did_ have H1B and other such temporary US visa
documents you would be photographed and fingerprinted.

Adam

On Sun, Oct 03, 2004 at 10:18:24PM +1300, Peter Gutmann wrote:
> "R. A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
> >NEWARK, Sept. 30 - Laetitia Bohn walked into Newark Liberty International
> >Airport on Thursday, dazed and sleepy after an eight-hour flight from Paris,
> >and was jolted from her reverie when an immigration officer asked for her
> >photograph and fingerprints along with her passport.
> 
> The US now has the dubious distinction of being more obnoxious to get through
> the borders than the former East Germany (actually even without this measure,
> the checks had become at least as obnoxious as the East German ones).  I
> wonder whether the next step will be building a wall...
> 
> Peter (who'll be thinking really hard about any future conference trips to the
>US).

Re: Foreign Travelers Face Fingerprints and Jet Lag

[Thomas Shaddack]

On Sun, 3 Oct 2004, J.A. Terranson wrote:

> (1) There are also a number of non-rebar+concrete "walls" in place to keep
> US citizens from leaving;

Please elaborate?

Re: Foreign Travelers Face Fingerprints and Jet Lag

[J.A. Terranson]

On Sun, 3 Oct 2004, Steve Furlong wrote:

> On Sun, 2004-10-03 at 05:18, Peter Gutmann wrote:
>
> > The US now has the dubious distinction of being more obnoxious to get through
> > the borders than the former East Germany (actually even without this measure,
> > the checks had become at least as obnoxious as the East German ones).  I
> > wonder whether the next step will be building a wall...
>
> Reign in the overheated rhetoric. The East German state built their wall
> to keep the East Germans from leaving, while the US policies are meant
> to keep out a demonstrated threat.

(1) There are also a number of non-rebar+concrete "walls" in place to keep
US citizens from leaving;

(2) The "demonstrated threat" folks are not generally the ones being
targetted.

The US *is* the Fourth Reich.

-- 
Yours,

J.A. Terranson
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
0xBD4A95BF

  "...justice is a duty towards those whom you love and those whom you do
  not.  And people's rights will not be harmed if the opponent speaks out
  about them."  Osama Bin Laden
- - -

  "There aught to be limits to freedom!"George Bush
- - -

Which one scares you more?

Spotting the Airline Terror Threat

[R. A. Hettinga]

Wherein the TSA thinks they can observe a lot by watching...

Cheers,
RAH
---



 Saturday, Oct. 02, 2004
Spotting the Airline Terror Threat
TIME exclusive: A new airport security system soon to be tested will rely
on human judgment
By  SALLY B. DONNELLY/WASHINGTON

 TIME exclusive: A new airport security system soon to be tested will rely
on human judgment  The most dangerous threat to commercial aviation is not
so much the things bad people may be carrying, but the bad people
themselves. That refrain heard constantly from airline security experts
over the past three years appears to have finally been heeded by the
Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Aviation sources tell TIME
that the TSA plans to address the problem by launching its own passenger
profiling system. The system known as SPOT (Screening of Passengers by
Observation Techniques) relies more on the human dimension in detecting
threats, and is to be tested at two northeastern airports starting later
this month.

 "This is a radical change to aviation security," says Sgt. Peter
DiDomenica, the Massachusetts State Police officer who developed the
racially-neutral profiling program in place at Boston's Logan Airport, on
which SPOT is based. "This is a very subtle but very effective program."

 Unlike the TSA's recently announced program to use computer databases to
scan for suspicious individuals whose names occur on passenger lists, SPOT
is instead based squarely on the human element: the ability of TSA
employees to identify suspicious individuals by using the principles of
surveillance and detection. Passengers who flag concerns by exhibiting
unusual or anxious behavior will be pointed out to local police, who will
then conduct face-to-face interviews to determine whether any threat
exists. If such inquiries turn up other issues of concern, such as travel
to countries like Afghanistan, Iraq or Sudan, for example, police officers
will know to pursue the questioning or alert Federal counter-terrorism
agents.

 DiDomenica has first-hand experience of the effectiveness of the system.
He was using his own observation techniques - called BASS (Behavior
Assessment Screening System) - last year when he saw man acting oddly near
the checkpoint and stopped him. The suspect passenger turned out to be an
agent from the Department of Homeland Security who had been trying to test
the system by sneaking a prohibited device onto a plane.

 Although the profiling programs are aimed primarily at stopping
terrorists, they have had other benefits. The Massachusetts State Police
have arrested about 20 people for infractions ranging from being in the
country illegally to failing to answer outstanding warrants for various
offenses.

 The TSA plans to test SPOT for 60 days before committing to taking it
nationwide, eventually to all of the country's 429 commercial airports.


-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
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'

comfortably numb

[Major Variola (ret)]

t 11:22 PM 10/1/04 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote:
>Questions were going through my mind. Would it hurt? What are the
risks?
>What if I want to get it out?
>
>I ordered another drink.

In the US its generally illegal to tattoo someone who is drunk.

>Comfortably numb

In many ways this fellow is.



I recently read that DoCoMo is moving towards using cellphones as
wallets for all kinds of value.

Though they could have the phone be an anonymous bearer
token like cash or a prepaid token
(which, like cash, limits the loss to the stored value if the phone is
lost
or stolen), they "thought customers would prefer transaction records".
Japs don't care for privacy, it seems.   If they lose the phone, its
just one call to DoCoMo instead of several to credit companies,
which is touted as a plus.  Makes analyzing behavior easier if
its centralized.  Insects.

Re: Foreign Travelers Face Fingerprints and Jet Lag

[Peter Gutmann]

Steve Furlong <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>On Sun, 2004-10-03 at 05:18, Peter Gutmann wrote:
>>The US now has the dubious distinction of being more obnoxious to get through
>>the borders than the former East Germany (actually even without this measure,
>>the checks had become at least as obnoxious as the East German ones).  I
>>wonder whether the next step will be building a wall...
>
>Reign in the overheated rhetoric. The East German state built their wall to
>keep the East Germans from leaving, while the US policies are meant to keep
>out a demonstrated threat.

I never made any comment about who's keeping what in or out (the wall was
officially an anti-fascist protection barrier, also meant to keep out a
demonstrated threat).  What I was pointing out was that having been through
both East German and US border controls, the US ones were more obnoxious.

Peter.

Re: Spotting the Airline Terror Threat

[Major Variola (ret)]

At 11:37 AM 10/3/04 -0400, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
> Unlike the TSA's recently announced program to use computer databases
to
>scan for suspicious individuals whose names occur on passenger lists,
SPOT
>is instead based squarely on the human element: the ability of TSA
>employees to identify suspicious individuals by using the principles of

>surveillance and detection. Passengers who flag concerns by exhibiting
>unusual or anxious behavior will be pointed out to local police, who
will
>then conduct face-to-face interviews to determine whether any threat
>exists.

Nice to see another euphemism for cultural prejudgice:
"the human element", mein fuhrer (insert Dr Strangelove image)

Reminds me of how you can't use race in eg loan application processing,
but you *can* use neural nets whose behaviors are hidden in the nodes.

(As a lib, I know its wrong to tell folks they can't use predicate-X;
but for the state to use eg race disguised as "the human element"
is criminal.)

PS: do cargo planes have kevlar doors yet?

Re: Foreign Travelers Face Fingerprints and Jet Lag

[Eugen Leitl]

On Fri, Oct 01, 2004 at 09:43:04PM -0400, R. A. Hettinga wrote:

>  "It was more easy to visit before," she said. "But I will still come back."

Well, no, I won't. (And quite a number of others).

No biometrics ID for me either.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl http://leitl.org";>leitl
__
ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144http://www.leitl.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net


pgp5sdpQgjYHg.pgp
Description: PGP signature

How small towns are reversing a century of corporate personhood

[R. A. Hettinga]

Mopping off the leftist drivel from the facts below, :-), the idea of
abolishing the personhood of corporations, as a step towards freeing
enterprise from the claws of the state, is a very attractive idea. A
limited partnership can get the same results, without the "artifical
person" nonsense.

Financial cryptography actually has solutions in this regard, of course,
with bearer equity, anonymous voting, m-of-n key sharing, etc.

By way of a Google cache. Sue me.

Cheers,
RAH
---



This is G o o g l e's cache of
http://www.sevendaysvt.com/-thisweek/feat/03.html as retrieved on Sep 24,
2004 15:51:22 GMT.
G o o g l e's cache is the snapshot that we took of the page as we crawled
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b

v


Bad Company?

How small towns are teversing a century of corporate personhood

STORY:
 KEN PICARD

Tom Linzey speaks at Vermont Law School, South Royalton, Thursday,
September 30 at 12:45 & 7 p.m.

Image: Tim Newcomb

Porter Township in northwestern Pennsyl-vania was an unlikely hotbed for an
anti-corporate uprising. The tiny rural community about an hour north of
Pittsburgh has a population of only 1500 people, many of whom are staunch
Republicans with deeply-held conservative values.

But after the Alcosan Corporation, a Pennsylvania sewage-sludge hauler,
threatened to sue Porter Township in 2002 for passing a local ordinance
regulating the dumping of sludge in their community, town officials decided
that their citizens had taken enough crap from corporations. Literally. So
on December 9, 2002, Porter became the first municipality in the United
States to pass a law denying corporations their rights as "persons" under
the law. Weeks later, Licking Township, another rural Pennsylvania
community facing a similar lawsuit, passed a more expansive ordinance
revoking all constitutional rights of corporations within their
jurisdiction.

Since then, dozens of other municipalities across Pennsylvania, some with
as few as 1000 residents, have followed suit, reversing nearly 120 years of
corporate encroachment on the rights guaranteed to all citizens under the
U.S. Constitution. Prompted by the failure of state and federal regulatory
agencies to protect citizens' health, safety and quality of life from
large-scale corporate activities, these municipalities took matters into
their own hands and reclaimed their right of self-rule. Though the laws fly
in the face of more than a century's worth of legal precedents that say
corporations are "persons" protected by the Bill of Rights and the 14th
Amendment, thus far these ordinances seem to be working.

Now some Vermonters are looking to follow Pennsylvania's example and draft
similar ordinances here to address environmental and public-health problems
stemming from large corporate activities: the influx of big-box stores, the
spreading of toxic sludge, even the proposed power increase at the Vermont
Yankee nuclear power plant. Proponents of this strategy suggest that these
laws may even be used one day to challenge undemocratic principles that
were written into the World Trade Organization charter and the North
American Free Trade Agreement.

Championing this fight is Tom Linzey, a 35-year-old Alabama-born attorney
who is the executive director and co-founder of the Community Environmental
Legal Defense Fund. Founded in 1995, the Pennsylvania-based CELDF was
initially set up to provide free legal services to small community groups
that were fighting big environmental battles: toxic-waste incinerators,
landfills, municipal sludge fields and corporate factory farms. Since then,
however, the nonprofit law firm has expanded its mission to help
municipalities around the country roll back corporate rights through local
ordinances. CELDF conducts "democracy schools" - intensive, weekend-long
seminars that trace the history of corporate rights and help citizens
reframe local issues according to a new paradigm. Once such democracy
school was held two weeks ago in Putney for 20 Vermonters from the
Brattleboro area.

Linzey, who speaks on September 30 at Vermont Law School, explained in a
recent interview how this movement began. In the mid- to late-1990s, large
out-of-state agribusinesses began applying for permits to build large-scale
hog farms in rural Pennsylvania. Local residents, who over

Re: Foreign Travelers Face Fingerprints and Jet Lag

[Steve Furlong]

On Sun, 2004-10-03 at 05:18, Peter Gutmann wrote:

> The US now has the dubious distinction of being more obnoxious to get through
> the borders than the former East Germany (actually even without this measure,
> the checks had become at least as obnoxious as the East German ones).  I
> wonder whether the next step will be building a wall...

Reign in the overheated rhetoric. The East German state built their wall
to keep the East Germans from leaving, while the US policies are meant
to keep out a demonstrated threat.

Now, we can productively discuss the effectiveness of the US
government's actions (ie, not very damn effective), but that's a
different topic.

RE: QC Hype Watch: Quantum cryptography gets practical

[Bill Stewart]

At 05:12 PM 9/30/2004, Tyler Durden wrote:
What's a "quantum repeater" in this context?
It's also known as a "wiretap insertion point"...
> As for "Hype Watch", I tend to agree, but I also believe that Gelfond
> (who I spoke to last year) actually does have a 'viable' system.
> Commerically viable is another thing entirely, however.
"Practical" implies that there's a crossover point between
cost and benefit and that implementation is on the "benefit" side.
Implementation may now be possible, and the costs may be lower
than their previous infinite value, but the main benefits I see are
public relations hype to impress the rubes and protect against
zero-day exploits against Diffie-Hellman or Cisco IOS.
But you could protect against the Cisco exploits just as easily
with a conventional-key encryption hardware box,
and you wouldn't need contiguous fiber.

Nightclub you'll want to skip - RFID microchipping the guests [BBC article]

[Bill Stewart]

Here's a nightclub you'll want to skip, unless you feel like hacking RFIDs...
("Nothing up my sleeve but this Rivest RFID Blocker!")
** Barcelona clubbers get chipped **
Some clubbers in Barcelona have opted to have a microchip implanted which 
lets them pay for drinks.
< http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/technology/3697940.stm >

BBC Science producer Simon Morton goes clubbing in Barcelona with a 
microchip implanted in his arm to pay for drinks.

Imagine having a glass capsule measuring 1.3mm by 1mm, about the size of a 
large grain of rice injected under your skin.

Implanting microchips that emit a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) 
into animals has been common practice in many countries around the world, 
with some looking to make it a legal requirement for domestic pet owners.

The idea of having my very own microchip implanted in my body appealed. I 
have always been an early adopter, so why not.

Last week I headed for the bright lights of the Catalan city of Barcelona 
to enter the exclusive VIP Baja Beach Club.

The night club offers its VIP clients the opportunity to have a 
syringe-injected microchip implanted in their upper arms that not only 
gives them special access to VIP lounges, but also acts as a debit account 
from which they can pay for drinks.

This sort of thing is handy for a beach club where bikinis and board shorts 
are the uniform and carrying a wallet or purse is really not practical.

Thumping heart
I met the owner of the club, Conrad Chase, who had come up with the idea 
when trying to develop the ultimate in membership cards and was the first 
person implanted with the capsule, made by VeriChip Corporation.

With a waiver in his hand Conrad asked me to sign my life away, confirming 
that if I wanted the chip removed it was my responsibility.

Four aspiring VIP members sat quietly sipping their beverages as the nurse 
Laia began preparing the surgical materials.

Like a scene from a sci-fi movie, latex gloves and syringes were laid out 
on the table as the DJ played loud dance tunes that made my heart thump, or 
was it just fear?

Questions were going through my mind. Would it hurt? What are the risks? 
What if I want to get it out?

I ordered another drink.
Comfortably numb
Laia started by disinfecting my upper arm and then administered a local 
anaesthetic to numb the area where the chip would be implanted.

With the large needle in her hand, she tested the zone which made me flinch 
and led to another dose of the anaesthetic.

With a numb arm, Laia held up the rather large needle containing the 
microchip and inserted it beneath the layer of skin and fat on my arm.

She pressed the injector and it was in - my very own 10 digit number safely 
located in my body.

The chip is made of glass and is inert so there is no risk of it reacting 
with my body.

It sits dormant under the skin sending out a very low range radio frequency 
so it will not set off airport security systems.

The chip responds to a signal when a scanner is held near it and supplies 
its own unique ID number.

The number can then be linked to a database that is linked to other data, 
at the Baja beach club it make charges to a customers account.

If I want to leave the club then I can have it surgically removed - a 
pretty simple procedure similar to having it put in.

Now, the question of did it hurt. Having the chip inserted was a breeze, no 
real pain to report of.

The real pain was the sore head the following day after a night on an open 
bar tab.

You can hear more about Simon's experiences on the BBC World Service 
programme Go Digital
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/3697940.stm

Published: 2004/09/29 08:17:45 GMT
© BBC MMIV

Re: Foreign Travelers Face Fingerprints and Jet Lag

[Peter Gutmann]

"R. A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

>NEWARK, Sept. 30 - Laetitia Bohn walked into Newark Liberty International
>Airport on Thursday, dazed and sleepy after an eight-hour flight from Paris,
>and was jolted from her reverie when an immigration officer asked for her
>photograph and fingerprints along with her passport.

The US now has the dubious distinction of being more obnoxious to get through
the borders than the former East Germany (actually even without this measure,
the checks had become at least as obnoxious as the East German ones).  I
wonder whether the next step will be building a wall...

Peter (who'll be thinking really hard about any future conference trips to the
   US).

Re: Suit complicates First Data's move to cut porn tie

[James A. Donald]

--
On 1 Oct 2004 at 10:32, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
>  First Data has been terminating all of its contracts with 
>  adult entertainment providers as they expire, a spokeswoman
>  said.

Way back at the beginning, cypherpunks said that the internet 
could result in alarming loss of privacy, or alarming 
improvement in privacy.  As events turned out, it went to 
alarming loss of privacy, as Bill Gates, Oliver North and the 
porn sites have discovered.

The problem is not irreversible.  If Oliver North had consulted 
a ten year old, the kid probably would have told him how to 
make sure his emails were really deleted.

I would have thought that the anti-trust debacle would have 
inspired Bill Gates to give higher priority to privacy 
preserving software.

Now that we finally see potential threats becoming real, 
perhaps people will, eventually, belatedly, start covering 
themselves from these threats. 

--digsig
 James A. Donald
 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
 OLPBj3P5+a0AMi3yjd+CWMKIt31RADZCuotKF/Ih
 4pWB1qcPC2GT4Gah22MCAlXN4mbYb7039CZzAK4UZ

RE: QC Hype Watch: Quantum cryptography gets practical

[Tyler Durden]

Yes, I am indeed a little suspicious. Clearly, this "quantum repeater" can't 
be doing an O/E, or no amount of hype will budge this product an inch.

Quantum Crypto utilizes pairs of correlated photons, so we can't be talking 
about an optical amplifer.

So since I've been away from the literature for a while, is there a device 
that can repair a deteriorating, about-to-be-collapsed superposition state? 
I can't see how this could occur without the requirement of acting on the 
other (correlated) photon either, and if that photon is physically removed 
from the first, then forget about it. (Though theoretically I think I can 
conceive of the possibility of two "correlated quantum repeaters" exchanging 
'information' (including gating) about the photon pair they are collectively 
handling*, but no way that can be useful commerically.)

*: This isn't quite as farfetched as it seems: Even 5 to 10 years ago it was 
shown that there can be quantum Forward Error Correction, and simple devices 
were demonstrated in the laboratory.

-TD


From: Bill Stewart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Tyler Durden" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: QC Hype Watch: Quantum cryptography gets practical
Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 11:59:40 -0700
At 05:12 PM 9/30/2004, Tyler Durden wrote:
What's a "quantum repeater" in this context?
It's also known as a "wiretap insertion point"...
> As for "Hype Watch", I tend to agree, but I also believe that Gelfond
> (who I spoke to last year) actually does have a 'viable' system.
> Commerically viable is another thing entirely, however.
"Practical" implies that there's a crossover point between
cost and benefit and that implementation is on the "benefit" side.
Implementation may now be possible, and the costs may be lower
than their previous infinite value, but the main benefits I see are
public relations hype to impress the rubes and protect against
zero-day exploits against Diffie-Hellman or Cisco IOS.
But you could protect against the Cisco exploits just as easily
with a conventional-key encryption hardware box,
and you wouldn't need contiguous fiber.
_
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Security. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963

Re: How small towns are reversing a century of corporate personhood

[R. A. Hettinga]

At 7:04 PM -0400 10/1/04, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
>the idea of
>abolishing the personhood of corporations

Of course, the act of abolition, using the law itself, is an exercise in
mental masturbation, which is what is really happening in Pennsylvania.

Financial cryptography gives us at least the hope of property -- or control
of property -- without legislation, if not prior legal agreement. David
Friedman's private law without public law.

Corporations, as creatures of this state wouldn't have to exist in such a
world, where limited liability could be done the old fashioned way: with
anonymity. :-)

Cheers,
RAH

-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
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'

Foreign Travelers Face Fingerprints and Jet Lag

[R. A. Hettinga]

The New York Times

October 1, 2004

Foreign Travelers Face Fingerprints and Jet Lag
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

EWARK, Sept. 30 - Laetitia Bohn walked into Newark Liberty International
Airport on Thursday, dazed and sleepy after an eight-hour flight from
Paris, and was jolted from her reverie when an immigration officer asked
for her photograph and fingerprints along with her passport.

 The officer took a digital scan of her left index finger, then her right,
and then snapped her picture with a tiny camera. The entire process took
only a few seconds, but for Ms. Bohn, a 29-year-old tourist from France, it
was an unnerving symbol of how much the United States had changed since the
terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"It made me feel kind of guilty, like a prisoner," Ms. Bohn said. "You can
feel the difference since 9/11. I was in New York seven years ago and
people were happy to have visitors. I don't think it's the case anymore."

 And so the day went - with a click of a camera and sharply conflicting
emotions as foreign visitors across the country arrived at American
airports, where officials for the first time began photographing and
electronically fingerprinting travelers from 27 industrialized nations,
including longtime allies like England, France, Germany, Spain, Japan and
Australia.

The policy shift, which was announced in April and took effect on Thursday,
will affect about 13 million visitors each year from 22 European countries
as well as Brunei, Singapore, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, who can
currently travel to the United States for up to 90 days without a visa.

 The change was made after intelligence reports indicated that terrorists
might take advantage of that provision, which allows travelers from Europe
and other industrialized countries to travel to the United States with
little scrutiny.

Until now, only travelers who needed visas to visit the United States were
fingerprinted and photographed at American airports in a program started in
January to ensure that suspected terrorists, criminals and violators of
immigration law do not enter the country. The program, which is now
expected to screen about 20 million foreign visitors at 115 airports and 14
seaports annually, is the latest security measure to affect foreign
visitors since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Last year, American embassies and consulates around the world began
collecting digital fingerprints from foreigners applying for visas.

 And beginning this fall, officials will require overseas visitors at some
airports and seaports to be fingerprinted and photographed before they
leave the United States to monitor whether visitors are in fact returning
to their home countries.

 "America has been a welcoming country and it continues to be one, but in
the post-9/11 era it has been necessary to make sure we know who is
traveling to our country," said Commissioner Robert C. Bonner, who directs
the customs and border protection unit at the Department of Homeland
Security.

Reaction from foreign governments was mostly muted. But some officials said
the policy raised privacy concerns. Japanese officials said they had asked
that the fingerprints and photographs be deleted when their citizens leave
this country.

"We understand the necessity of the U.S.'s new measures," Motohisa Suzuki,
who coordinates antiterrorism programs for Japan's Cabinet Office, said on
Thursday. But Mr. Suzuki added, "We need to be fully discreet about the
handling of the private information."

Airline and airport officials were bracing for longer lines on Thursday.
But customs officials, who surveyed about 20 airports on Thursday
afternoon, said that only 40 of the 1,500 flights reported slower than
normal waiting times attributed to the new procedures.

Officials noted, however, that September was typically a slow month for
overseas arrivals and that Thursday was typically a quiet travel day.

"So far, so good," said Joseph A. Cardinale, acting port director for
passport control at the Newark airport. "We've had the experience of doing
the fingerprints and the photographs for several months now, so it's not
new to the officers. That's a tremendous help.''

Tourists greeted the system with a mixture of nonchalance and irritation.

 Bruce Reid, a 59-year-old doctor from Australia, said he did not object.
"I haven't got a criminal record, so it doesn't worry me much," said Dr.
Reid, who flew into Los Angeles.

 Marleen Maas, 43, a homemaker from Frankfurt, disagreed.

"What's next? Are they going to take pieces of my hair, too?" asked Ms.
Maas, who flew into Miami to visit her daughter. "It didn't take long, but
it made me feel like a criminal."

In Newark, Marc Eisenchteter of Paris said the process moved efficiently.
Ms. Bohn agreed and said that despite her misgivings she would still return
to the United States.

 "It was more easy to visit before," she said. "But I will still come