Re: oppose nomination of John Ashcroft
At 9:00 AM -0500 1/20/01, Declan McCullagh wrote: >Reno probably didn't expect the situation to, um, blow up in her face. > >It is also undisputed that if they wanted to avoid a show of force, >they could have nabbed Koresh during his jogs around the property >line or whatnot in the morning. Reese, you blather too much. > I also believe that neither Waco nor Ruby Ridge were expected to go down as they did. Neither Reno nor Clinton gained anything from these debacles. What I fault is the general trend toward "militarizing the police," especially the trend toward using federal police instead of local sheriffs and law enforcement. In both cases, Waco and Ruby Ridge, local law enforcement was bypassed, even "kept out of the loop." This should not be acceptable in a constitutional republic consisting of states. There are also fundamental problems with the War on Some Weapons, the War on Some Drugs, and the War on Some Religions. Claims that Randy Weaver had sawed an inch or so off a shotgun, part of an entrapment by Feds who wanted his cooperation in other matters, tell us how close we are coming to being a police state (though we are not yet there in any plausible sense). Claims that David Koresh was mingling in unapproved ways with young women, or was selling weapons illegally (never proved, even after the ashes had been sifted), should have been handled locally, not by calling in federal ninjas. As for Ashcroft, we'll see. Bush won, so Bush gets to appoint his staff. The whole "review by the Senate" thing is a relic of the McCarthy era, actually, and should be done away with. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: More on G3s
At 7:39 PM -1000 1/12/01, Reese wrote: >At 09:29 AM 1/12/01 -0800, Tim May wrote: >>At 7:45 AM -0600 1/12/01, Jim Choate wrote: >>>Go back to the archives and you will find Tim May claiming that ANY HK >>>rifle with *3 (eg 93 or G3) is a .223 whereas the *1's (eg 91) are .308. >>>When in fact the '3 means .223' applied ONLY to the '90' (ie 91 or 93) >>>class weapons. The reality (which Tim never admited either) is that a G3 >>>IS in fact a 91, or the other way around if you prefer historical >>>lineage. The G3 was the mil-spec and the 91 was the civilian clone. But >>>hey, since when was Tim interested in FACTS? Never. >> >>Nonsense. I have known what a 91 and a 93 (and a 94) were for many >>years. Almost bought a 91 in 1975, _did_ buy a clone. >> >>You still haven't responded to what I sent out after my own search of >>the archives: > >More important (to me) than quibbles about model numbers, >and I've not yet seen it addressed in this forum; > >At 12:06 AM 1/11/01 -0500, Tim May wrote: > >>NATO was planning to standardize on the 7.62 mm NATO round for >>its main battle rifle. (The length was 54 mm, hence "7.62 x 54 NATO." > >7.62 x 54? > >54? > 51. I acknowledge my mistake. Doesn't matter in the big scheme of things. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: NONSTOP Crypto Query
At 11:54 AM -0500 1/12/01, John Young wrote: >One of the Tempest FOIA docs NSA released recently >concerns NONSTOP, a term whose definition is classified >as SECRET. About half of the document, NACSEM 5112, >"NONSTOP Evaluation Techniques," has been redacted, >and we'll publish it soon. > >>From the clear text, NONSTOP appears to refer to >protection against compromising emanations of cryptographic >systems, and maybe in particular radio crypto systems. > >Another document refers to NONSTOP testing and protection >being especially needed on vehicles, planes and ships. > >We've been unable to retrieve more than a few words from >the redacted portions (by use of xerography to reveal text >below the overwrites), and would appreciate any leads on >what NONSTOP means. The Tandem Computers "NONSTOP" was a product line in use by various government agencies for secure (fault-tolerant) computing for a long time. I'd look there for starters. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: More on G3s
At 7:45 AM -0600 1/12/01, Jim Choate wrote: >Go back to the archives and you will find Tim May claiming that ANY HK >rifle with *3 (eg 93 or G3) is a .223 whereas the *1's (eg 91) are .308. >When in fact the '3 means .223' applied ONLY to the '90' (ie 91 or 93) >class weapons. The reality (which Tim never admited either) is that a G3 >IS in fact a 91, or the other way around if you prefer historical >lineage. The G3 was the mil-spec and the 91 was the civilian clone. But >hey, since when was Tim interested in FACTS? Never. Nonsense. I have known what a 91 and a 93 (and a 94) were for many years. Almost bought a 91 in 1975, _did_ buy a clone. You still haven't responded to what I sent out after my own search of the archives: At 8:51 AM -0700 12/23/97, Jim Choate wrote: >Forwarded message: > >> Date: Tue, 23 Dec 1997 01:08:04 -0700 >> From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> Subject: Re: Best Cypherpunk long gun (fwd) > >> I can't agree that the HK 91 (the .308 version) is a popular sniper >> weapon. > >Military and police snipers the world over differ strongly with you... >Beside, it's the 93/G3 not the 91 (thought they do share a lot of commen base >pieces) that is the sniper rifle. I believe you will also find that the .308 >is the base caliber for all versions. Your wording above would indicate the >91 was .308 while the 93 was a different caliber, this is incorrect. Visit >the H&K home page... This speaks for itself, especially: "Your wording above would indicate the 91 was .308 while the 93 was a different caliber, this is incorrect" In fact, the 91 *is* a .308 and the 93 *is* a different caliber. Do you still dispute this? > >He went on and on about the '3 means .223' and that this applied to ALL >HK weapons. I said no such thing. Please produce the message. > > >Tim's general approach (Declan's as well) is "if they disagree with me >they must be stupid". What you'll find is Tim making argument after >argument but he never defends them. Actually, many of us have wasted far more time on your crankish ideas than they deserve. > >Come on Tim, show us the email wher I (not you) claim Gauss's Law doesn't >apply? Show us the email where I (not you) claim the G3 is not .308. For example, your claim: "Beside, it's the 93/G3 not the 91 (thought they do share a lot of commen base pieces) that is the sniper rifle." The 93 is a .223, not a .308, and it is _not_ the sniper rifle. Further, your phrase "G3 not the 91" shows your basic confusion. The G3 is the military version of the 91, not of the 93. Trivial points, in some sense, but deeply illustrative of your mania for stating something that is incorrect and then never admitting your mistake, even years later. Which is why even your co-workers acknowledge your crankishness. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
More on G3s
[Sent this morning, 1/11, to algebra.com address. Not received as of 11 hours later. So am sending out to cyberpass.net address.] At 1:12 PM +0100 1/11/01, Tom wrote: >Jim Choate wrote: >> Up until then I thought I did too...I"m not so sure any more. >> >> It's not a clone of the HK G3 as it was explained to me, it was apparently >> used as an interim weapon when the German Army dropped the HK G3 as a >> standard issue weapon a few years ago (ala G11). Maybe FAL, they're >> selling a 'G1' rifle that uses caseless ammo? Though I can't find a >> reference to any such rifle. Maybe it was CETME you do see their gun >> pushed as the 'G3' (the HK is a 'clone' or derived weapon from the Spanish >> gun). > >a friend of mine was an officer in the german army until very recently >(he decided to get a real job :) ) - give me 24 hours and I'll tell you >exactly what the past and current standard issue weapons are and what >kind of ammo they fire. On Choate's point above, it is not FAL (a rifle, but I assume Choate must mean the maker of the FAL, Fabrique Nationale, now owned by another company, IIRC) who are making a caseless ammo rifle. Rather, it is in fact H-K. The G11 has been in development for close to 30 years now. (H-K are _also_ owned by another company. Last I heard, a British company bought H-K, though the factories and design groups remain in Germany.) Most NATO countries have now adopted some variant of the 5.56 mm cartridge, in either M-16-type variants or in bullpup designs like the excellent Steyr AUG or the newer HK G36 (with a civilian model, the SL8). Neither the caseless ammo of the H-K G11 not the flechette-firing prototypes are getting wide acceptance. And as relates to Choate's "I was right" point, repeated again recently, the G3 in use by the German army was most definitely a 7.62 mm, i.e., a .308 Winchester. It was _not_ the 5.56 mm variant, at least not for wide use. (I say this because quibblers like Choate like to find examples where _someone_ used a 5.56 mm and then say "See, I was RIGHT!") --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Declan's book
At 6:31 PM -0500 1/10/01, Declan McCullagh wrote: >On Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 01:11:01PM -0800, Tim May wrote: >> I hope you don't do this. There have been several of these kinds of >> collections--a guy at MIT has done at least a couple of them (I >> forget his name, though three of my short pieces are in one of his >> books: the books cost $40-60 or so, for a damned paperback, which is >> why I don't have my own copy. Even at this high price, they don't pay >> for submissions and they don't even give out copies to contributors!). > >As someone who makes the vast bulk of his income from speaking fees, I >wouldn't undertake such a project unless I could pay contributors and >get a generous number of copies to hand out. Seems only fair. "Pay contributors"...such a radical, but hokey, concept. Without going into details about my financial situation, the prospect of a dollar a word, or three, or whatever it is publishers typically pay contributors these days, is not enticing in the slightest. The phrase "I don't get out of bed for less than..." comes to mind. A share of the profits might be, though I expect there would be little in the way of profits for a non-bestseller. It's true that I don't get paid a single dime for the things I write for Usenet, or mailing lists, even for the things others choose to include in their books (which I give permission for, when they contact me). But I also don't have a schedule to adhere to, I write about what interests me, and I don't have any obligation to do extensive research of the footnote variety. If someone wants to pay me, say, $10,000 for whatever I can crank out in a couple of days, I guess I'd be willing to contribute something to such an edited book. If rewrites were called for, or more research were to be needed, then I'd want more money. Colin Powell recently got paid $200,000 for a 30-minute off-the-cuff speech on some "why foreigh policy matters" b.s. topic. Of course, it was underwritten by a Lebanese "businessman" said in news reports to have close ties to Syrian intelligence, so do the math. A legal way to buy influence in our strange society. If Colin Powell can give N of these b.s. speeches a year, my thoughts are surely worth $10K for a day or two's worth of writing. Of course, this won't happen. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: Bell Case Subpoena
At 5:09 PM -0500 1/8/01, John Young wrote: >Today at 4:30 PM two Treasury agents, Tom Jack and Matthew >Mc Whirr, served me a Subpoena to Testify Before Grand Jury, >in US District Court of Western Washington, Seattle, WA, on >January 25, 2001, 9:00 AM. Robb London, AUSA, is the >applicant. > >The subpoena states in bold caps "We request that you do not >disclose the existence of this subpoena, because such a >disclosure may make it more difficult to conduct the investigation." >... > Please provide any and all documents, papers, letters, computer > disks, photographs, notes, objects, information, or other items > in your possession or under your control, including electronically > stored or computer records, which: > > 1. Name, mention, describe, discuss, involve or relate to James > Dalton Bell, a/k/a Jim Bell, or By the way, John, thanks for the "heads up." I purged my archives of Jim Bell e-mail sent directly to me, though I left on my system the e-mail he copied the list on. (Yes, I purged the back-ups, too. A good reason not to back up e-mail to CD-Rs.) --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: As Dot-Coms Go Bust in the U.S., Bermuda Hosts a LittleBoomlet
At 3:46 PM -0500 1/10/01, Declan McCullagh wrote: >On Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 12:22:52PM -0500, John Young wrote: >> The full story of crypto is yet to be written, in particular its >> deceptions, perhaps a piece by Vin McLelland, one by >> Declan, one by Tim May, if not by distributed cyperhpunks >> not quite so malleable as solo individuals given privileged >> access on the condition that . . . > >True. As a journalist, I do my best to avoid those conditions. I think >of them (probably not an original thought) as entangling alliances. > >I could easily cobble together a book proposal that would include >chapters by cypherpunk types; I'd edit. I've been thinking of writing >a book for a while -- even had meetings with publishers in '96 -- but >it would take too much time. Editing would be far easier. I hope you don't do this. There have been several of these kinds of collections--a guy at MIT has done at least a couple of them (I forget his name, though three of my short pieces are in one of his books: the books cost $40-60 or so, for a damned paperback, which is why I don't have my own copy. Even at this high price, they don't pay for submissions and they don't even give out copies to contributors!). What you'd end up with is a printed collection of a bunch of mini-rants or survey articles, whose total verbiage is just a tiny snapshot of the field. There's probably a role for a good book on, say, "digital money," with a mix of overview articles and detailed articles. This would be a _lot_ of work, and the editor would need to be well-versed in the field. But not a book on "Cypherpunk" themes. Too many seemingly-unrelated areas, too much background to cover (ironically, compared to digital money, but I think this is so). And Yog help you if you end up just putting together whatever junky stuff people are willing to submit. > >> What about that timing of CRYPTO release and the NSA > > show? > >Ah, it was a lackluster show and not that important. > I didn't see it, but I assume it was like most of the past t.v. shows on the NSA and codes and such: Discovery Channel, History Channel, BBC "Horizon," CNN, etc. These shows are easy for producers to put together: lots of shots of radomes and antennas and NSA buildings, a tour of the Cryptologic Museum, some obligatory juicy stuff about Enigma and Turing, interviews with talking heads about the need for blah blah, and so on. Feh. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: Refutations Considered Unnecessary
At 3:52 PM -0500 1/10/01, Declan McCullagh wrote: >On Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 10:06:25AM -0800, Tim May wrote: >> e) Brin's book would be just another drop in the ocean, anyway. His >> vision of the future is unlikely in the extreme (t.v. cameras in >> police offices...sure, whatever), so refuting his "bad memes" is just >> a waste of time > >Right. Everyone's forgotten it; books like that (and Crypto, and >Database Nation) have a short half-life. And of course there are at least a _dozen_ books on the general issue of "privacy." One of the Kennedy's co-authored one (or at least agreed to have her name put on the cover, perhaps). Whit Diffie co-authored one. And so on. A dozen, at least. Nothing new, either. There are even a bunch of recent popularizations of crypto, steganography, PGP, etc. Do they really matter? At the margins, sure. Some kid in junior high school is perhaps discovering Singh's book on "Secret Codes" (or whatever the exact title is) the same way Whit Diffie read one of those early crypto books when he was a kid. Ditto for political books. It's not that I'm jaded, it's that there are TOO MANY DAMNED BOOKS out there. I spend a lot of time in Borders and Bookshop Santa Cruz, two very large and well-stocked bookstores in my town. (Declan can confirm this, though he may not have seen the new Borders yet.) I browse, in the classical sense, the New Books section most times I'm in there. The turnover is incredible. The range of topics is incredible, from climbings of an obscure peak in the Himalayas, to what women want in their sociology classes, to what the AOL-Time Warner deals means for prospects of peace on the Korean peninsula. And, every month, new books on quantum weirdness, new books on online privacy, new books on the history of the Web, etc. A flood of writers, a flood of books. The topics get more specialized in the same way Ph.D. theses have gotten so specialized. The grand unifications are few and far between. Who reads this stuff? We are drowning in a sea of factoids and well-researched books on obscure Beat Generation poets and books on the impact of technology. Big deal. Very few current books actually are _important_. (There are some, IMO. "The Elegant Universe," "Noah's Flood," "Emerging Viruses," in recent years. The novels of Stephenson, Vinge, Gibson, in past years. "Atlas Shrugged," whatever flaws it may have. Etc.) With the reported declines in reading amongst school children (various reasons, from poor schooling to lots of other choices like videos and games), and this explosion of titles, and with bookstores bigger than they ever were when I was a kidhmmmhhh, lots of interesting forces about to collide. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: Refutations Considered Unnecessary
At 1:49 PM -0500 1/10/01, John Young wrote: >Well, yes, I owe the cypherpunks founders an apology, >so apology sent. > >Our rump session after Steve's talk last night, to which >he didn't come, put me face to face with 20 nyms and >let me tell you online has its virtues -- the main one >being never having to have people stare at your >TLA forehead mark and you at theirs. > >Everybody in the room said they're working on a >book, really, but what they needed was a writer to >burnish the jewels. There was a writer there but >incognito, knowing what happens in NYC at >any gathering when pols, doctors, lawyers and thieves >lock onto someone who has authentic literary skills. Well, I went through my "working on a book" phase in 1988-91, when I was working feverishly for many hours a day on my Great Crypto Anarchic Novel. (At least many of the ideas for the novel turned out to be useful for the Next Phase, which was Cypherpunks.) I, at least, never fell prey to the Usual Malarkey of thinking that all I needed to do was feed some ideas to a Real Writer who would then help me finish it, or collaborate. Fact is, generating a book is hard work. In terms of lining up the publishers, editors, etc. The actual writing may not be too hard, based on some of the fluff I see out there. (Some of the 120-page pieces of fluff by Silicon Valley types, for example, which look like something easily generated by anyone with even modest writing skills. In fact, I'm sure most of these books by Valley CEOs are, naturally, ghost-written.) > >Even a total stranger at the bar up front had a story which >he said makes the stuff in CRYPTO mere child's play. >NSA-trained he claimed to be and a long time battler of >corporate evildoing. Great piles of files to prove it, only >a ghost writer needed. See! At least we don't hear this kind of tripe at Bay Area gatherings. People are too aware of how foolish this stuff sounds. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: IP, forwarded posts, and copyright infringement
At 12:54 PM -0500 1/10/01, Declan McCullagh wrote: >[Jim sent me the below message directly without any indication that >it was also sent to the list. But from past experience, I know >better. Another example of not-quite-adequate Choatian social norms.] > >Anyway, Jim is conflating physical control over an instantiation of >IP with the rights conferred by IP law. If someone copies Microsoft >Word (or a Tom Clancy novel) onto a CDROM and gives it to me, I am >not liable. > >-Declan > > >At 11:36 AM 1/10/01 -0600, Jim Choate wrote: >> > (Hint: U.S. copyright law does not make mere possession or archiving >>> an offense. Try distribution, performance, etc.) >> >>Hint: WRONG. >> >>Simply possessing a paperback book that has had its cover removed as a >>sign of 'destroyed' status is in fact a crime. Used book stores that have >>them in stock can be charged accordingly. So, if I tear the cover off of a paperback book that I legally own (bought, for example), Choate's claim is that this "is in fact a crime"? Gee, so much for scienter. So much for proof of actual criminal action. So much for tort law. Jim, please call the police, as I have just torn the cover off of a book I own. Worse, I just cut the tags off of a mattress. Call before I commit more crimes. Fucking retard. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Tales from an Alternate Reality
At 12:23 PM -0500 1/10/01, Declan McCullagh wrote: >It's amazing how Jim can be so earnest and so completely >wrong. Actually, I've known him too long: It's not remarkable, but >predictable. > >(Hint: U.S. copyright law does not make mere possession or archiving >an offense. Try distribution, performance, etc.) > >On Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 09:29:37AM -0600, Jim Choate wrote: >> >> It has been proposed that forwarding a URL with a page attachment is >> copyright infringement. Taint so. > > >> The situation is equivalent to a group of friends sitting around a table >> and only one paper among them. As they discuss a particular article they > > pass it among themselves. This is fair use and this is what forwarding a >> URL and content attachment to a mailing list is. >> > > The copyright infringement issue arises when you SAVE that post. The real >> question of copyright infringement is the archivist who saves it but >> doesn't have permission to hold a copy of that material. It is the act of >> archiving digital data that is infringement and not sharing of access. >> >> Strictly speaking the ONLY group who has a legal requirement to strip > > attachments is archive sites. Declan, Jim Choate is actually correct in what he says above. The laws of physics, the history of the United States and Europe, even mathematics...all are as he describes them. In his world. In "Choate Prime," the parallel universe which he lives in, the Constitution is as he describes it, electromagnetics work as he describes it, prime numbers have the properties he has told us about, and copyright law works in the way he describes. As a reporter yourself, you should be appreciative of these reports from Choate Prime, that parallel world off-kilter from our own. --Klaus! von Future Prime -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Refutations Considered Unnecessary
At 12:22 PM -0500 1/10/01, John Young wrote: > >Steve at one point cited cypherpunks as a hopeless >venture to overturn government with ideas of >cryptoanarchy. And laughed at that. Then continued >propounding the false idea that NSA is needed >to protect US interests. Not a word about such interest >being those of the USG. > >The full story of crypto is yet to be written, in particular its >deceptions, perhaps a piece by Vin McLelland, one by >Declan, one by Tim May, if not by distributed cyperhpunks >not quite so malleable as solo individuals given privileged >access on the condition that . . . > >What about that timing of CRYPTO release and the NSA >show? But, John, weren't you just a week or two ago speculating that the very _origins_ of the Cypherpunks group and list in 1992 had something dark to do with NSA covert ops? As one who was there, at all times, I can most assuredly tell you that neither Eric Hughes nor Hugh Daniel nor Arthur Abraham nor John Gilmore nor Jude Milhon had any links to the NSA or other TLAs. If you knew these folks, you would know, too. As for writing a book, this is for book writers. Remember when Brin's book came out a few years ago? I had some folks in Palo Alto pressuring me to join in on a "collective refutation" of the "bad memes" in Brin's book, with the idea of some kind of speaking tour or counter-book to follow Brin around as a kind of "truth squad." I declined to be part of such a collective effort, because: a) better things to do with my time b) I don't like committee or collective efforts c) no such truth squad would get even a fraction of the "air time" that a published author like Brin would get d) the sheeple really don't care, anyway e) Brin's book would be just another drop in the ocean, anyway. His vision of the future is unlikely in the extreme (t.v. cameras in police offices...sure, whatever), so refuting his "bad memes" is just a waste of time As it happens, I never heard a peep out of this group. Maybe they dropped the idea. Maybe they got no one to sign up for the Anti-Brin Brigade. Maybe they got no press coverage. Who cares, anyway? As for Levy's new book, I've only read parts of it. My copy from Amazon hasn't arrived, so I only checked out a few pages in the local bookstore. What I saw looked accurate. As for his views toward "crypto anarchy," what else would one expect? If the future many of us think is likely is in fact _actually_ likely, then what does it matter whether Levy makes dismissive comments on his book tour or not? I didn't find him making dismissive comments in his book, which is what will be read, anyway. (And even if he did, see previous point...) Look, it was fairly clear to me back in 1987-88 what was going to happen. I have all of my notes from that period, as well as some published essays. Without going into details here, many of the things I thought would clearly happen have _already_ happened. (And, by the way, I made a lot of money by investing in companies based on my expectations.) I've already written a _ton_ of stuff on these matters. Some essays collected into books by others. (Maybe even the new Vinge book, though the editor has been incommunicado with me for three or four years, so I don't even know if my piece will be in the long-delayed re-issue of "True Names.") So count me out on some effort to Write Yet Another Refutation (of a book that doesn't, in my view, need refuting). Others are welcome to. I hear Gary Jeffers is still kicking around, eager to be asked to write such a book. Jim Choate would probably like to be a part of it, too. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: Bell Case Subpoena
At 12:33 PM -0800 1/9/01, Bill Stewart wrote: > >On Monday 08 January 2001 16:09, John Young wrote: > >> You are also commanded to bring with you the following >>>document(s) or object(s): >>> >>>Please provide any and all documents, papers, letters, computer >>>disks, photographs, notes, objects, information, or other items >>>in your possession or under your control, including electronically >>>stored or computer records, which: >>> > >> 1. Name, mention, describe, discuss, involve or relate to James > >> Dalton Bell, a/k/a Jim Bell, or >>> >>> 2. Were previously possessed, owned, created, sent by, transported, >>> or oftherwise affiliated with James Dalton Bell, a/k/a Jim Bell, or >> >>How would you know if it was sent by him unless it had a digital signature >>that you are willing to testify in court was know to belong to him and >>had not been comprimised? > >I'd think there'd be serious problems with most of the evidence >in this case being hearsay, except stuff specifically >posted by Jim Bell. ven a "From: Jim Bell" doesn't prove anything. Besides knowing this from first principles (about spoofing, signatures, etc.), we have seen this demonstrated on this very list. Recall that various posters were claiming to be "Toto" during the unfolding of that situation. Recall that Detweiler (presumably) used to issue posts with my name attached, with Nick Szabo's name attached, with Eric Hughes' name attached, etc. These points were never tested in the court cases of Bell or Parker. John Young could quite easily show up in Seattle with _none_ of the items the subpoena calls for. If questioned, he could say he had no means of knowing if the articles, posts, etc. were in fact from Bell or were generated by Infowar cointelpro operatives in law enforcement or even by Detweiler or May or whomever. Also, even if he chooses to comply and grep through his mail archives for "any and all documents...mention...discussJim Bell," this would presumably turn up many hundreds of such documents. And the provenance will be unknown (an ordinary mail spool, or Eudora folder, or Outlook Express whatever, etc., being editable and alterable). John Young (or anyone else) could have edited his mail spool to put words into "Bell"'s alleged mail. I expect this upcoming trial will not be the case which hinges on these kinds of issues, but some court will someday have to contend with this utter malleability of received mail files. Unlike paper letters which can be forensically analyzed, e-mail is nearly meaningless. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: The uses of pseudo-links
At 8:04 AM -0800 1/9/01, Ray Dillinger wrote: >On Tue, 9 Jan 2001, Trei, Peter wrote: > >>[Jim: It's ok that you have no problem with >>your ineffective methods of giving pointers >>to articles, but your wasting your own and >>other's time - there's simply no reason for >>people to follow your links, since they are >>generally useless] > >Actually, not *entirely* useless. Usually right after jim >talks about an article and posts a link that doesn't point >at it, someone else will post a correct link. If Jim >just shut up, some of these stories probably would escape >our notice. In the course of correcting his errors, people >do provide useful information. > Your definition of "useful" is different from mine. I believe lists like ours should primarily be about discussions and points of view, not a third-hand CNET or Register or Slashdot. There are many Web sources of breaking news (not that a lot of the "functional quantum computer" sorts of stories are usually breaking news...). Personally, I like it when someone finds a news item, provides a detailed URL, even quotes (in ASCII, not MIME!) a paragraph or two, and then comments on it and connects it to Cypherpunks issues. Merely dumping out "general science" items, with general URLs, is just plain abusing the list. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: The Cost of Natural Gas [was Re: The Cost of California Liberalism]
At 2:37 PM -1000 12/29/00, Reese wrote: >At 03:33 PM 12/29/00 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >>Looking at the queue of plant requests within California they also seem >>to be obsessed with building them in highly populated areas. > >Easy commute for the workers, and a large pool to draw workers from? Most of the proposed new plants are very, very small. Nearly all in populated areas are natural gas-fired plants, with minimal-to-zero burden on the local environment. For example, a couple of such small plants have been built in the San Jose area in recent years. Environmentalists even favor building such a plant over letting Cisco expand, to name a recent newspaper issue. What these new plants ARE NOT is the kind of large nuclear plant comparable in size to the highly successful Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Station. That plant was completed more than 15 years ago. It is in an unpopulated area, between Half Moon Bay and Pismo Beach, and west of San Luis Obispo. A similar plant was once planned for Bodega Bay, northwest of San Francisco, but it was blocked by tree huggers in the early 70s. > >Another consideration, for building closer to where the demand is. >These are self-evident considerations. Especially for the "micro plants" described above. Economies of scale, etc. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: That 70's Crypto Show (Remailers, science and engineering)
o send it" and "bandwidth/latency." A remailer network is pretty good at sending small packets (e-mails) through N hops, where N can be quite large, so long as a latency of ~ hours is acceptable, which it usually is. And at very low cost. However, sending Web page queries and responses through is another matter. ZKS believes that "untraceable surfing" is an important business model...and for this sort of app they need PipeNet-like bandwidth. And so on. I wish e-mail allowed us to draw pictures. IMO, any analysis of breaking mixes should be heavily-centered around economic analysis. This is not as heretical as it sounds. Game theory of both main flavors--matrix game theory of the Von Neuman/Morgenstern/Nash type and combinatorial game theory of the Conway/Berlenkamp/Guy type--often involves payoffs, costs, and other economic issues. IMO, there is no reason crypto cannot easily co-opt such approaches. At the most trivial level, work factor is a fundamentally economic issue. For mix-nets and other Cypherpunkish things, economic analysis is everything. > >Well, this is what I get for trying to moderate myself. Everything you say >is correct - of course. I actually agree with you! I mentioned this >because I wanted to avoid playing the part of a "theoretical Cassandra," >which is something I do too often. (In fact, if I'm not mistaken, that's >part of what Tim's response about different adversary models attempts to >speak to - the fact that traditional cryptographic models assume a >maximally powerful adversary, while we might want a finer grained >hierarchy of adversaries and their effects...) Yes, as noted above. Pure crypto is often treated as a pure math exercise, akin to finding "existence" proofs of the sort we see standard problems (travelling salesman, Hamiltonian cycle, etc.). But crypto is really more of an N-party game, with Alice and Bob (and maybe others) making moves and countermoves. (This is one reason many such games are in an important sense "harder" than being merely NP-complete.) The moves and countermoves, and the hidden knowledge (*), are similar to the evolutionary process of building and attacking castles and other fortifications. Siege engines, better walls, traps, moats, economic isolation, etc. (* A standard assumption--it probably has a name that I have forgotten--is that the attacker of a cipher has complete knowledge except for the key. That is, he can take the cipher back to his lab and attack it with everything he's got except for the key itself. This is sort of the Basic Modern Assumption. Security through obscurity is deprecated (because, practically, it falls long before the other attacks). However, even in crypto we find things like "tamper-responding systems," which alter the equation: there is now a cost in attacking such a system, as the adversay _knows_ the attack is occuring and may take steps in response. Again, N-party games.) Pardon this rambling above. I expect Dave and Bill and some others know where this is going. Really, this is a call for a "new paradigm" in crypto. More later. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: The Cost of Natural Gas [was Re: The Cost of CaliforniaLiberalism]
At 11:22 PM -0800 12/26/00, Raymond D. Mereniuk wrote: >Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote > >> Lost on your typically smug Canadian analysis has been any objective >> analysis of markets for power. Do you know, for example, that >> California as a state is a _net exporter_ of power to the Northwest >> and especially to Western Canada at certain times of the year? In the >> fall and winter, in fact, when hydroelectric generation rates in BC >> and Washington are reduced. > >I don't know where you get your information but I doubt your >statements. California is a net exporter of power is suspect, lets >see the details here. I said "at certain times of the year." British Columbia is tied by treaty arrangements (Columbia River Treaty, 1961) to the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), and is, VERY SIGNIFICANTLY, now part of same grid that is the ISO, the Independent System Operator, mostly based in California. Read the following and weep for your beloved Canadian independence: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001208/ts/california_power_dc_3.html For example, "`We're about to find out next week just how interconnected the Western grid really is,'' Patrick Dorinson, spokesman for the California Independent System Operator (ISO) told Reuters. "The ISO operates about 75 percent of the California power transmission grid, the biggest part of a network of high voltage lines that spans from northern British Columbia to the northwest Baja California and as far east as the Rocky Mountains. " Between the Columbia River Treaty power-sharing and the Western Grid, it's all one main grid. Importantly, my point that California exports power _at certain times of the year_ is covered in the material below: For example: http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/001205/n05491394.html "CONCERNS OVER NORTHWEST SUPPLY CRUNCH The crisis has now spread to the northwest states of Washington and Oregon, where electricity is often used for heating. Those states export power to California in summer to help it meet its load but flows reverse in winter as heating demand grows in the northern states. ... ``We have always taken for granted that California will help out the Northwest in winter as we help them in summer,'' saidDulcy Mahar, spokeswoman for the Portland, Ore.-based Bonneville Power Administration, noting the Northwest is hoping that Canada will be able to provide some help in an emergency." and from http://nepa.eh.doe.gov/eis/eis0171/0171chap3.htm "The peak load demands of the Pacific Northwest and California occur at different times. The Pacific Northwest peak demands occur in the winter, and California's peak demands occur in the summer. During the summer, the hydro-based Pacific Northwest and BPA systems tend to have excess capacity, which can be used to help meet California's summer peak demands. California's thermal-based system tends to have excess capacity in the winter, which can help the Pacific Northwest meet its winter peak. Full use of both systems can reduce the need for new resources in each system. BPA currently has several seasonal energy and capacity for energy exchange contracts in effect with a number of California utilities. > >Sorry, this is where you are showing your Childishly naive >understanding of the energy business. In the energy business >(natural gas wise) if you commit to the supply and build >infrastructure you get lower prices. > >I re-state my initial premise, Californians have a lot to learm about >energy economics! If you don't commit, you pay more! --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: That 70's Crypto Show (Re: Dude! It's wired!)
At 2:42 AM -0500 12/26/00, dmolnar wrote:
>On Mon, 25 Dec 2000, Tim May wrote:
>
>> Some of the foundations are, of course, "mature"...and not very
>> exciting. The core of mathematical crypto is hardly frontier
>> mathematics. (Yeah, I suppose Dave and Eric and a few others could
>> make a case that there's some connection with the proof of Fermat's
>> Last Theorem, stuff about elliptic functions, etc. But we all know
>
>I don't think I'd go that far. As far as I'm concerned, elliptic curves
>are just another group to do Diffie-Hellman & friends in. What I'd call
>the "core" of mathematical crypto is the work that Goldreich, Goldwasser,
>Micali, et. al. have been doing over the past fifteen years -- trying to
>rough out just what kind of assumptions are necessary and sufficient to
>give us the kind of cryptography we want.
Has there really been much progress in the last ten years? I remember
the flurry of ground-breaking work in the mid-80s, and it was much in
the air at the first "Crypto Conference" I attended in 1988 (also the
last such conference I attended, for various reasons).
Something I expected to have happened long ago was the
encapsulization of these protocols into building blocks into
libraries/classes/reusable objects that could be bolted together by
those building systems. ("Let's take EncryptStream and throw in
EscrowService and then add ObliviousTransfer...").
This is partly what I mean by "devolving back to basic ciphers." It
seems that when all is said is done, the only real "core module" we
have is basic encryption. And even that is not treated as a module
(yeah, I know that RSA is only recently unencumbered by patents).
Some stuff with signatures, too, but basically very similar.
In short, the world doesn't look very different than it did in 1990.
The Web is different, but not in how users send messages and files
back and forth.
>
>Depressingly enough, we keep finding that the focus *needs* to move back
>to simple encryption. Birgit Pfitzmann published a paper in the 1980s on
>"How To Break the Direct-RSA Implementation of MIXes." Today, nearly
>fifteen years later, we still don't know "really" what we need from
>an encryption system for MIXes; David Hopwood has some good thoughts,
>but we're not done yet.
>
>On the other hand, we can oppose this to the fact that we have a bunch of
>remailers, and they seem to work. They may be unreliable, but no one seems
>to have used padding flaws to break a remailer, as far as we know.
Yes, and those remailers are not much different than what we specc'ed
out at the very first Cypherpunks meeting.
That they work as well as they do relates to the economics point.
A digression: One of the conventional models for a cryptographic
attack is that an attacker gets to take a problem back to his lab and
torture it to death, i.e., throw as much computer power against a
cipher as he wishes. This is a reasonable model for ciphers.
However, mix-nets and such need to have some economic considerations.
It costs money and effort to subvert certain nodes and alter message
padding, times of sending, etc. An attack on a mix-net is not the
same as taking the whole net back into NSA basements and proceeding
to diddle it to death.
Chaum, Pfitzman, et. al. of course refer to n-out-of-m sorts of
collaborations, but left unsaid is the cost of such collaborations. A
start, but missing a lot.
That such a simple implementation of Chaum's mix-net (it had to be
simple, as I was the one who specc'ed out most of the features a
remailer network needed to have, and Eric Hughes implemented some of
them in Perl, then Hal Finney added PGP a few weeks later) has not
had a known major attack is a tribute to the difficulty in actually
subverting enough nodes in a mix-net.
(Nodes in different countries, nodes operated more-or-less on
automatic pilot, nodes which mail to _themselves_, nodes which are
"middleman only," etc.)
Crypto does encompass the idea of a "work factor," of course. Usually
expressed as MIPS-years or somesuch. This needs to be extended in
some rough way to include the costs of soliciting cooperation or
collusion, etc. Without such inputs, how could a heterogeneous mix of
remailers be analyzed?
>
> > (And, as I have been saying for close to 10 years, the
>insurance
>> industry will be a driver of new approaches. Newer safes were bought
>> not because store and bank owners were "educated" about security (the
>> precise analogy to security today), but because insurance premiums
>> were lessened with better safes. Discounted present value, DPV,
> > speaks louder than all of the moralizing and lecturing.)
>
That 70's Crypto Show (Re: Dude! It's wired!)
At 9:50 PM -0500 12/25/00, dmolnar wrote:
>On Sun, 24 Dec 2000, Eric Cordian wrote:
>
>> Perhaps next year will be better. I'm almost begining to feel
>> that Cryptology has achieved the status of a "Mature Science."
>
>It's my impression that mature sciences don't have the same kind of
>foundational or engineering problems cryptography does. We still see
>surprises about what a "definition of security" should be, even in the
>public-key setting where people have investigated such things for nearly
>20 years. Plus even when we figure that out, we'll still have to deal with
>the fact that the models used in theoretical crypto don't deal with some
>of the attacks possible in real life -- timing and power analysis come to
>mind. As does the van Someren and Shamir trick for finding keys because
>they look "too random."
Parts of cryptology are in math, e.g., number theory. And parts are
in economics. And parts are even in human psychology.
Some of the foundations are, of course, "mature"...and not very
exciting. The core of mathematical crypto is hardly frontier
mathematics. (Yeah, I suppose Dave and Eric and a few others could
make a case that there's some connection with the proof of Fermat's
Last Theorem, stuff about elliptic functions, etc. But we all know
that such connections are tenuous. Most of crypto still is built
around good old number theory, basically what has been known for
dozens of years, even centuries. Euler would not have had a problem
understanding RSA.)
The "far out" stuff of reputations, multi-player games, digital
money, etc., is much less-grounded in theory. More interdisciplinary,
more "fuzzy," more prone to hand-waving. Doesn't mean this this isn't
the interesting area, just means it's not as "foundational" as math
areas are. Reductionists who seek the rigor of a pure science often
end up throwing out what's interesting.
As many of us have noted over the years, and as Austin Hill recently
noted vis-a-vis the ZKS technologies, the status of these things is
roughly where mathematical ciphers ("pure crypto") were in, say,
1970. Some interest, some popularizations, some secret work at NSA
and related places, but no serious academic coverage.
By academic coverage I mean researchers studying weaknesses in
various kinds of data havens, digital currencies, reputation systems,
etc., in the same way that the "Crypto Conference" folks looked at
various ciphers. (And specific digital currency systems, for example.)
Crypto systems, using a mix of crypto tools, is only slowly taking
off. In fact, the focus keeps moving back to simple encryption,
depressingly enough!
Someday, more complex systems will be actually deployed.
An interesting way to look at such systems is to to think back to
many examples of engineered systems. Steel buildings, for example.
The "basic science" of steel, its strength and properties, was
basically well-understood a century ago. A bit of later science,
through understanding of things like martensitic transitioins and
dislocations, etc., happened. But most of foundational science was
laid a long time ago.
And yet buildings collapsed, engineered figured out new ways to bolt
together beams, and taller and taller buildings were erected.
Crypto systems will be a lot like that.
(And, as I have been saying for close to 10 years, the insurance
industry will be a driver of new approaches. Newer safes were bought
not because store and bank owners were "educated" about security (the
precise analogy to security today), but because insurance premiums
were lessened with better safes. Discounted present value, DPV,
speaks louder than all of the moralizing and lecturing.)
>
>It may be true that this year was a lull in "interesting" cryptographic
>research (I don't know if that's quite true), but it doesn't seem to be
>because too many problems are solved. Rather, there are lots of open
>problems left which no one seems to know how to solve...
I go further: the academic community is largely uninterested in, or
unmotivated by, or unable to get funding for, the "Cypherpunkish"
areas. Possibly this is because most fields are not
interdisciplinary, so a researcher is more likely to study a pure
math approach than to mix in economic/market issues.
(E.g., our "Hayekian" sensibilities make a lot of sense to nearly
every smart person who gets exposed to them, but such approaches
smack of voodoo economics, to coin a phrase, to many pure
researchers. I cite this is as just one facet of the issue. And, by
the way, the Hayekian approach fits right in with "building
skyscrapers," though not for the writing of papers about dislocation
propagation in high-tensil
More half-baked social planning ideas
At 9:25 AM -0800 12/25/00, Ray Dillinger wrote: > >Just an observation, but most of the specific causes of this crisis >point strongly to one general cause -- ie, there are too many people >in California. More than the local water supply can handle. More >than power can be generated for locally (unless someone builds a >nuke powerplant, and you can already hear the Nimby's screaming...). >More than food can be grown for without exhausting water tables to >irrigate the central valley. Not even _close_ to being true. Yes, there are many people. "Too many" is an esthetic judgment. The water coming off of the Sierras is more than enough for twice the current population, providing they all don't try to have large green grass yards (cf. xeriscaping). The market solution for water, as it is for power, computers, frisbees, and anything else, is to let the market price goods. If someone wants to pay $3000 a year to keep their lawn green, their choice. As for food production, food is fungible and is shipped where markets want it. Vastly more food, of certain types, is grown in the Central Valley, and in the Salinas Valley (near me), than is consumed locally. > >Another general cause is that most of the current houses are built >stupid. In the 1940's and 1950's houses were built that were quite >habitable without constant airconditioning. They had basement >windows where air could be drawn in and air was cooled in the >basement with scads of thermal contact with the cool earth. California houses have almost _never_ had basements. Check it out. Check the history of houses built throughout the state, going back a century or more. The main "reason" for basements is to put a foundation below the frost line. Mainly for structural reasons: a house built on top of the heave line is subject to thermal heave, cracking the foundation. (Houses can of course be built without basements or partial basements even in cold climes, via careful sinking of foundations. But digging out to below the frost line and then building on top of that was the most common approach.) John Young, as an architect, can no doubt say more about why basements are common in cold climes but much less common in temperate climes. (I lived in coasta France, on the Riviera, for a year. Virtually no houses had basements. Ditto for Italy. Ditto for Greece. Move north, however, and houses start to be built with basements.) By the way, most of the 34 million current California residents live in the coastal strip, from San Diego to LA to Santa Barbara to San Luis Obispo to San Jose to San Francisco and the other Bay Area cities. Most of them don't use air conditioning. (I lived for 5 years in San Diego--no A/C. Lived for 4 years in Santa Barbara--no A/C. Lived for 12 years in Santa Clara--A/C in one of my apartments, which I only used half a dozen times. Lived in Santa Cruz for 14 years--no A/C.) My siblings live in California: no A/C. I can't think of a single person I know who has air conditioning...they may exist, I just can't think of who they might be. >There >were open airways that circulated air drawn up from the basement >through the first and second floor, and windows in the second floor >where heated air was allowed to escape. Many of them were made of >adobe or other materials with great thermal inertia, which mediated >the extremes of temperature. Earth to Ray: Adobe and other thick-walled structures are "deprecated," as the current lingo would have it. I'll let you figure out why. >All of these are perfectly sound >thermodynamic principles, which have been abandoned because wood-frame >concrete slab houses are cheaper to build and home buyers haven't >been thinking about the cost of cooling the damn things as part >of the purchase price. If building codes were modified, or if >contractors and developers had to bear the first ten years of >utility costs out of house prices, we'd probably see a substantial >reduction in the so-called "need" for power. > > Bear Do you simply invent this stuff? Cypherpunks has become a dumping ground for half-baked social theorists. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: The Cost of Natural Gas [was Re: The Cost of CaliforniaLiberalism]
You don't get it, do you? At 11:50 PM -0800 12/24/00, Raymond D. Mereniuk wrote: > >was created by un-expected demand in California. Another issue >in this problem, as in this month and next, is low water levels in the >northwest causing lower than expected power generating capacity. Lost on your typically smug Canadian analysis has been any objective analysis of markets for power. Do you know, for example, that California as a state is a _net exporter_ of power to the Northwest and especially to Western Canada at certain times of the year? In the fall and winter, in fact, when hydroelectric generation rates in BC and Washington are reduced. In your kind of lingo, "British Columbia failed to build enough new plants." Markets are not simple. Prices rise, prices fall. To claim that California is now the primary cause of your higher heating costs, boo-hoo, is childishly naive. > >If a power generating utility had built new power plants and >commited to a fuel supply (and the accompanying infrastructure) the >likelihood of unexpected prices increases would be much lower. See above. Childishly naive. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: The Cost of Natural Gas [was Re: The Cost of CaliforniaLiberalism]
At 3:31 PM -0800 12/17/00, Raymond D. Mereniuk wrote: > >The consumer price for natural gas here is based on the delivery >price at Sumas Washington which is a pipeline crossing into the >USA and a major supply point to California. The cost to heat my >home will have more than doubled by January 1st. The price I must >pay is heavily influenced by demand in California. It is always cold >here and the furnace is even used in the summer. There are more >people in California than in all of Canada and most Canadians live >on the other side of the continent. This market is much too small to >influence the price of natural gas. Size of a market is a shifting concept. British Columbia and Vancouver are certainly large markets. If there were a nuclear power plant in western Canada, much of its output would likely go to Vancouver. Guess what? No nuke plants in western Canada. > >tanker. I believe I would rather have nuclear power plant in my >neighbourhood than a liquidified natural gas facility. Perhaps you can lobby your politicians to allow nuclear power plants to be built in your region, then. > >It would be nice if Californians took responsibility for their lifestyle, >built the power plants in California and dealt with environmental >issues themselves. You have a choice, if you don't want power >plants, don't use power. This whole post shows a shaky understanding of economics. You are bitching and moaning that someone else's bids on power exceed what you would like to pay. "I would like to have a Ferrari Testarossa, but there are so many people around the world willing to pay such outrageous prices that the prices have simply gotten out of control. If Californian would take responsibility for their outrageous lifestyles, there would not be so many Californians buying Ferraris and we people in British Columbia would have a chance to afford them." As for your own energy needs, install propane. This is what I have. And fill the tank well in advance of when spot market fluctuations drive the price up. Or move to a warmer clime. Living in the far north _does_ carry a price. Also, bear in mind that a lot of off-peak power is shipped into Canada from the Bonneville Power Administration. It seems we Yanks had the foresight to dam the Columbia River back in the 1930s. It's a reason the Hanford Nuclear Reservation was located in the Tri-Cities area--cheap and plentiful power--and it's a reason several aluminum smelters, including a Canadian one, located there. And a bunch of chip companies. I don't have the time to spend doing detailed research, but with the many nuclear plants in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, etc., and the zero nuke plants in the western part of Canada, and the Bonneville Power Administration, I wouldn't be surprised at all if more net power doesn't flow across _into_ B.C. than out of it. Just a hunch. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: CDR: This is why a free society is evil. [Re: This is why HTML email is evil.]
At 6:26 PM -0800 12/15/00, Bill Stewart wrote: > >Tim May wrote: >>> In a free society, free economy, then employers and employees are >>> much more flexible. A solid contributor would not be fired for >>> something so trivial as having a porn picture embedded in some minor >>> way. Hell, a solid contributor probably wouldn't be fired even for >>> sending MPEG porn movies to his buddies! > >... and Tim goes on to attribute this to lawsuits of types >that he asserts wouldn't happen in a free society. >It's not that cut and dried - in a free society, >solid contributors are often fired for non-economic reasons, I didn't say that contributors are not fired for non-economic reasons. Maybe they're not putting out for the boss, maybe he doesn't like people who supported Gore. Whatever. Not for anyone but the property owners to deal with. >and one reason such people are _not_ fired is also fear of lawsuits. Depending on the terms of an employment contract (most have none), employees are employed at will. In a free society, that is. >Stupidity may be stupid, but it's not rare, and there are >lots more opportunities for random decisions to get made. > >One friend of mine was having lunch with her boss and a male >coworker that she got along well with, (back in the 70s) and the boss >asked if they were going out. "No, Bob, Charlie and I are both gay"; >she and her coworker were both fired that week. In a free society, so what? >It wouldn't happen today, at least here in San Francisco, >partly because of changing attitudes in society (or at least >because people got used to it), and partly because the boss >would worry about losing other productive workers or customers, Which is as it should be >but also because the boss would get sued or harassed by _some_ >city or state agency whose job is harassing businesses. >But there's much of the country where it could happen. Because we don't live in a free society. Which was my point. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: 1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: This is why a free society is evil. [Re: This is why HTMLemail is evil.]
At 11:54 AM -0800 12/15/00, Ray Dillinger wrote: >On Fri, 15 Dec 2000, Tim May wrote: > >>The reason the company now prohibits all sorts of activities, and the >>reason the Personnel Commissar is inspecting offices, is because of >>_externalities_ like lawsuits, harassment charges, etc. In a free >>society, these externalities would vanish. > >>Nope, the fear is of lawsuits. > >Do you posit that people should not be free to file lawsuits? Yes, in these cases, they should _NOT_ be able to file lawsuits. -- If an employee doesn't like the calendar that another employee has on his desk, she can talk to others in the company. Maybe they'll have it removed. But she CANNOT use the courts to intervene in a matter of how the company's owners deal with their property. -- and so on, for other examples I could construct. Lawsuits should only be "allowed" when some matter of law is involved. > > >Why do you regard harassment charges as external? Basically >the goal of a business owner is to have people capable of both >producing and working together. If you have two workers who >are both productive but who can't work together (for example, >one guy who makes dirty jokes and sends porn movies around, and >one woman who takes mighty offense and brings charges against >anyone who acts like that) you have to decide which one to get >rid of. Sure, one of them may have to go. Such was it 20 years ago, such was it 100 years ago. But the court system and EEOC sorts of offices were not involved until in recent decades. Whether I as a business owner allow "girlie calendars" on the walls of my shop is no business of the State. > >As more and more women are in the workforce, the possible cost >in productivity from such obnoxious behavior rises; If the >company is allowing the guy to be offensive on company time >or using company email accounts, they wind up offending a large >part of their workforce. They stand to lose a lot of other >productive employees by keeping one productive jerk on board. Such "possible cost in productivity" issues are matters for the business owners to decide upon, not the courts, and not regulatory agencies. > >And this is a completely separate issue from the legal liability. >The legal liability, again, is not an externality: The company >has to allow its resources to be used in this way in order to >become liable. The company could, to be fair, refuse to allow >its resources to be used to file the suits -- but that could not >stop the suits from being filed on personal time, any more than >refusing to allow company resources to be used to spread porn >can stop a jerk from spreading porn on personal time. I give up. Reading your stuff here makes me realize why it is hopeless to argue with those infected with legalitus. You will make a fine lawyer. Meanwhile, I have decided life is too short to waste it by reading your legalisms, so I am must put you in my filter file. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: 1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: Questions of size...
At 7:42 PM + 12/12/00, Ben Laurie wrote: >Sampo A Syreeni wrote: >> >> On Mon, 11 Dec 2000, Ben Laurie wrote: >> >> >Chambers defines geodesic as "the shortest line on a surface between two >> >points on it" and that is precisely the meaning in general relativity. >> >> No question about it. The term also doesn't mean a whole lot when applied >> as-is in the many instances it is on this list. As Tim put it, it pretty >> much equates to "cyberpunkish". > >Not being subscribed to cypherpunks (has S/R improved?) I will have >missed that. Signal happens when good writers contribute good articles. Noise happens in the expected ways. Noise is what the delete key, and filters, were made for. As you are apparently reading this from the "DBS" list, you are not seeing any of my contributions. Regrettfully, DBS (and DCSB, or Bearebucks, or whatever Bob is calling his list(s)) is not an "open system." The Cypherpunks tried such a censored list a few years ago, and we rejected the approach. I wrote a large article debunking the "geodesics is about topology" point of view. Others have said similar things. Please don't contribute articles to the Cypherpunks list if you are, as you say, not subscribed. While we don't reject articles by nonsubscribers, as per the above, it is tacky and rude for nonsubscribers to address articles to lists they are not tracking. Thank you, --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
RE: Re: About 5yr. log retention
At 12:45 PM +0100 12/11/00, Tom Vogt wrote: >Tim May wrote: >> >> At 1:41 PM +0100 12/8/00, Tom Vogt wrote: >> >Me wrote: >> >> In English it is preferable to write "I wrote," though "Me wrote" is >> honored in some subcultures. > >that part is put in automatically by netscape. I don't usually add >obvious statements like "look, I can write" to my mails. :) > > >anyways, my whole point was that for many people, religion is as or even >more important than law. I'm sure you have a fair share of them as well. >so things can get pretty interesting when 2 such high-level values >collide. more interesting than a collision between, say, the law and a >more-or-less important demand for privacy. > >that's the whole point. I know some people just can't help turning every >spelling error into an attack on their fundamental values, but frankly, >that's not my problem. Lighten up. It was a joke. (I even provided a hint, in the "honored in some cultures.") --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Re: The US mis-election - an oportunity for e-voting..
At 11:58 AM -0500 12/10/00, Robert Guerra wrote: >Declan: > >I completely agree with you that internet voting isn't quite ready >fom prime-time just yet. But given the current snafu I highly >suspect that there will be a lot of interest in the field. > >Certainly, I hope one of the few things the new congress will be >able to do is set-up a commission to propose new voting standards. >Hopefully they will pick a standard that doesn't give rise to >problems 30-40 years in the future... > >personally, if I had a say I'd say they should adopt the same system >Canada uses. They use a 100 year old system, had few if any >recounts, and managed to count all thier manual ballots in less than >72 hours. It wasn't a close election, was it? Didn't think so. In the U.S., when the election isn't close, the ballots are counted, and recounted, by midnight of the day of the election...maybe by mid-morning the next day. It's the _closeness_ that magnifies potential hinge points into court cases, redefinitions, and recriminations. As for "Hey, kids, let's all put on an electronic vote!," it's been discussed many times here. And elsewhere. RISKS had a major discussion of the...risks. As someone said in recentl weeks, if we really want to see elections stolen efficiently, make them electronic. No paper trail, no evidence, no chads, just pure gleaming bits. --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Re:
At 2:26 AM +0100 12/9/00, Mats O. Bergstrom wrote: >At 10:52 2000-12-08 -0800, Tim May wrote: > >>[[EMAIL PROTECTED] removed from the distribution list. They claimed >>not to want any politics discussion, and they are a closed list, so >>why is political discussion going to it?] > >As I remember ancient history it was the coderpunks offspin refusing >any politics while "Perry's list" - cryptography - started with the intent of >allowing crypto-politics and related subjects that the moderator would >let through. Anyway, "Perrygrams" have become almost extinct on the >cryptographt list lately. Whatever. The modus operandi is for someone to create His Own List and then issue the rules and tell people he doesn't want politics talked about. Unless, of course, he is the one talking politics, or unless he likes what others are saying. Fine that people want such closed lists, whether Perrypunks, Lewispunks, Declanpunks, Hettingapunks, whatever. Just don't crosspost from their closed lists to our open list, is all I ask. (Every time I write a message pointing this out, I can count on getting a snippygram from one of them saying that I am perfectly free to become a member of their lists and thus be able to post. No thanks, on general grounds. Plus, I am not interesting in writing an essay and then having my submission blocked by Perry or Lewis or whomever. I accept their propertarian right to do such blockage, of course. Doesn't make it what I want, or what I think the community benefits from.) --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Re: Re: Fractal geodesic networks
At 10:17 PM -0500 12/8/00, R. A. Hettinga wrote: >At 5:49 PM -0800 on 12/8/00, Bill Stewart wrote: > > >> At 02:47 PM 12/8/00 -0600, Jim Choate emetted: >>>'fractal geodesic network' is spin doctor bullshit. >> >> Well, buzzword bingo output anyway. > >:-). "Neological" is so much more... euphemisitic... > >>>And the Internet is most certainly NOT(!) geodesic with respect to packet >>>paths. >> >> more like a geodesic dome filled with boiled spaghetti... > >Depends on what dimension you're measuring. For fun, I pick time. > >I leave a definition of fractal time to the more mathematically creative >out there. You're the one using it, so why would you ask us to try to guess what you mean? Unless you are saying you were just hand-waving, which would make Choate's point, much as I am loathe to admit. --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Fractal geodesic networks
At 8:46 AM -0800 12/8/00, Ray Dillinger wrote: >On Thu, 7 Dec 2000, petro wrote: > >>Mr. Brown (in the library with a candlestick) said: >> >>>(RAH might have called it a geodesic political culture if he hadn't got >>>this strange Marxist idea that politics is just an emergent property of >>>economics :-) > >Just by the way, how widespread is this use of the word 'geodesic'? > >Offhand, I'd refer to many of the things I've seen it used for here >as 'distributed' or 'fractal'. Is 'geodesic' an accepted term of art >for a network or protocol in which all the parts work roughly the same >way? > Distributed, fractal, peer-to-peer, nonhierarchical, geodesic, silk road, agoric, anarchic, are all terms basically describing the same sort of thing. Which term is whizzier is in the eye of the beholder. Personally, I got tired several years ago of hearing everything described as a "fractal geodesic network." I don't know whether the term was coined by its chief user, Bob Hettinga, or by a similar propagandist, George Gilder, or by someone else. The naming issues are parallel to the issues with "open systems," "bazaar and the cathedral," etc. But I imagine others are tired of hearing me talk about crypto anarchy. I'm not sure "geodesic" captures the important issues. Are merchants in a Baghdad bazaar part of a "fractal geodesic network"? I suppose. But this is just a basic open market, with no top-down rules set. Is the Law Merchant a fractal geodesic network? Whatever. --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Re: CDR: RE: Re: About 5yr. log retention
At 1:41 PM +0100 12/8/00, Tom Vogt wrote:
>Me wrote:
In English it is preferable to write "I wrote," though "Me wrote" is
honored in some subcultures.
>
> > if i were to cloak my desire for privacy in the words of the
>> Great Squid, would it be more legitimate?
>
>does it matter?
>
>the point is that almost everyone even here is not willing to go to jail
>or worse for "another tiny bit of privacy". we don't draw a sharp
>boundary. we don't say, for example, that knowing my street is ok, but
>knowing my house number is over the line.
>and the total population is even worse. the vast majority of internet
>users would give you pretty much anything for a minimal return ("one
>hour free surfing"), and everything else for a larger one ("$100 for my
>political and sexual preferences? sure.")
>
>the muslim veil, on the other hand, IS a sharp boundary. as I understand
>it, it is NOT permisable to lift it in public under ANY circumstances.
Me was making a different point, that presumably there is no legal
distinction, at least in America, between the religion of Islam and
the religion of the Great Squid.
As to your language about "it is NOT permissable ...under ANY
circumstances," there are many religious beliefs which are overruled
by law in the U.S. Mormon polygamy (several spouses), for example.
Peyote rituals, for another example.
Though there are some "variations in regulations" allowable for
various religions, such as rules about wearing hats in military
services, etc., there is a very general principle in the U.S. which
says that the law applies equally to all, regardless of religious
beliefs.
(This is a major reason for having a minimal state, with the set of
laws only being the "Schelling points" (a game theory term many of us
like to use) which nearly all persons can agree to.)
The Great Squid has equal standing with Mohammed, in other words.
Things are dramatically different in Germany and other countries, we
all understand. But in the U.S., no particular religion is supposed
to have any special favor in the eyes of the law. There are even
Satanist chaplains/priests in the U.S. armed services.
--Tim May
--
(This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the
election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Bill Clinton belatedly decides that pot smoking should not becriminal
Gee, Bill, you're only about 6-8 years too late: --excerpt-- Wednesday December 6 10:15 PM ET Clinton: Pot Smoking Should Not Be Prison Offense LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - President Clinton (news - web sites), who tried to avoid the stigma of smoking marijuana by saying he never ''inhaled,'' tells Rolling Stone magazine that people should not be jailed for using or selling small amounts of the drug. --end excerpt-- Instead of pushing for legislation in '93-94, Clinton is now opining that all of those hundreds of thousands of folks his Drug Warriors put in in prison maybe shouldn't be there. Something tells me the New Bill will soon be bashing Carnivore, CALEA, Clipper, Echelon, and all other things Janet Reno, Louis Freeh, Jamie Gorelick, and all of the other Drug Warriors and Ninja Raiders were pushing so hard. We may even see the New Bill say he was never in favor of burning 90 people alive in Waco for the sin of believing in a bizarre variant of Christianity. Of course, he probably did the RS interview when he thought Bush was going to win and his party would be the Disloyal Opposition, railing against Carnivore, no knock raids, sentencing enhancements, the persecution of Jim Bill, CALEA, and so on. The New Bill may have to modify his new radicalism in light of the possibility that Algore and his ZOG Veep may manage, through the cleverness of their shysters, to pull a victory out of the ashes. Revised version, in the December 23 "Letters to the Editor": "Actually, I was misquoted in that "Rolling Stone" article. What I actually said was that Sen. Clinton and I are both behind President Gore's Campaign to Save the Children Act. If those who traffic in the Evil Weed think they can hide behind the Constitution, they'd better watch out for the pre-dawn raids!" --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Re: My plan to deal with subpoenas to testify
At 1:08 PM -0800 12/6/00, Tim May wrote: >At 3:52 PM -0500 12/6/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: >> >>>(Note about expenses: I had heard during the Parker trial that >>>various witnesses called to travel to Washington were to "submit >>>travel expense receipts." Is this true? What part of the >>>Constitution says citizens must >> >>Yes. It's a standard government form. They also paid something like >>$25 a day while you waited outside the courtroom before being >>called to the stand, and $40 a day you actually testified. Yay. > >As I said, it's not my job to buy plane tickets, hotel rooms, etc. >and then fill out a government form. > >Actually, I remember someone saying during the Parker case that a >government travel office would make all travel and lodging >arrangements. > >Not my job to lend money to the government. > >I'm watching a lawyer on the stand in the Seminole County part of >the rolling trial say that he charges $500 an hour to testify in >court cases. Sounds like a good fee for me to charge. I mis-spoke. He's not a lawyer...he's a statistics professor. Still, sounds like a good fee to charge for my "expert testimony" on Bell's scheme, should it come down to this. --Tim -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Re: My plan to deal with subpoenas to testify
At 3:52 PM -0500 12/6/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: > >>(Note about expenses: I had heard during the Parker trial that >>various witnesses called to travel to Washington were to "submit >>travel expense receipts." Is this true? What part of the >>Constitution says citizens must > >Yes. It's a standard government form. They also paid something like >$25 a day while you waited outside the courtroom before being called >to the stand, and $40 a day you actually testified. Yay. As I said, it's not my job to buy plane tickets, hotel rooms, etc. and then fill out a government form. Actually, I remember someone saying during the Parker case that a government travel office would make all travel and lodging arrangements. Not my job to lend money to the government. I'm watching a lawyer on the stand in the Seminole County part of the rolling trial say that he charges $500 an hour to testify in court cases. Sounds like a good fee for me to charge. --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
My plan to deal with subpoenas to testify
At 12:17 PM -0500 12/6/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: >On Tue, Dec 05, 2000 at 07:22:30PM -0500, Greg Newby wrote: >> >> Bottom line, as usual, is to trust no-one, including ISPs >> or sysadmins that have a strong privacy ethic. > >On the web sites that I maintain, I have a stated policy that we >intend to challenge subpoenas for our web logs and user database. Of >course, talk is cheap, and I'd hope to find funding for lawyers or >pro-bono work. Then again, it's a likely possibility: When I got a >subpoena, I found pro bono counsel (and excellent one too). I'll say what I expect to do. Partly to address some interesting issues about how witnesses may be compelled to travel long distances (beyond the usual countywide travel that noncyberspace cases typically involve). And partly to think aloud on my plans. As Declan says, "talk is cheap," so I may wimp-out, or think better of my plans, or get advice which changes my mind. But here goes: -- if and when I am called to testify in the Bell or Parker re-trials or re-re-trials, I expect to hire no damned shysters -- ditto for a subpoena...I'll try to read the subpoena and understand it as best I can and then comply with it as best I can. (Of course, _serving me_ is problematic. I had a process server make several trips out to my semi-rural hilltop home in 1995 before finally reaching me at home. And that was when I still answering the doorbell. These days I use my peephole, or a t.v. camera I sometimes have set up. I doubt a process server could get to me.) -- if the law is so confusing that I am expected to "retain counsel" to explain it to me, while his $400 an hour meter is running, then the law is an ass -- I was surprised to see so many "affidavits" and "interviews" and "pre-trial statements" from various witnesses in the Parker case. Surely these people must have known that though their presence could have been compelled in Washington state, that they had no obligation to sit down with Federal agents and give interviews! In a nutshell, this has been my plan for the past year or so (subject to modifications, as noted above): If subpoenaed, I'll expect them to provide _all_ transportation and lodging, in advance, in acceptable-quality hotels and with nice transportation. In advance. (I don't lend money to the government--see note below). I'll give no interviews prior to be seated in the witness box. While I can be compelled to testify in a courtroom, I find nothing in the Constitution which says I may be compelled to give pre-trial interviews. (From t.v. shows, I gather it is common for both sides to extensively interview witnesses, getting "depositions," etc. I figure it may be interesting to put this to a test: "Put me on the stand if you can. But you won't know what I'll say until then.") Oh, and no "swearing on a Bible," as I'm not a follower of He Whose Name May Not be Uttered, or whatever name they call their god by. If asked a question, I will take my time to consider my answer and then answer as simply as possible. If I believe the terms in the question are ambiguous, I will ask for them to be clarified. If I am jailed for contempt, for unacceptable reasons, then I expect to take appropriate actions against the kidnappers at a later time. (Note about expenses: I had heard during the Parker trial that various witnesses called to travel to Washington were to "submit travel expense receipts." Is this true? What part of the Constitution says citizens must lend money to the government and then petition to get some of it back later?) A bunch of my friends are involved in "pro se" court issues. While I hope to not waste valuable months of my life, as they have, coming up to speed on shyster jargon, I can't see the average lawyer picked out of a phone book knowing anything more about First and Fourth Amendment sorts of issues than I've picked up over the years. Most of the "court-appointed attorneys" seem to have been especially clueless in anything beyond pleading out a rapist. Anyway, I was not called to testify in the Parker case. In the latest Bell case, I don't know what will happen. --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Re: Buying Mein Kampf via the Net
At 12:58 PM +0100 12/6/00, Tom Vogt wrote: >Tim May wrote: >> This is misleading. There is much debate about ownership of the >> copyright, whether it has expired (as would normally be the case >> after roughly 70 years, whether the licenses sold to other publishers >> are valid, etc.). > >it's been changed to 70 years after death of author recently, at least >in the US. that would make the expire date 2015. > > > >> Quite odd that the publisher Houghton Mifflin would say they are >> donating all royalties since 1979 if in fact no copies have been >> published since 1945! >> >> Even more odd if some of us have copies in our libraries which were >> published much more recently than 1945. > >here's what I wrote: > >> only copies printed before 1945 are actually legal, > >am I missing the link between "legal" and "existing", or did you imagine >it? The copies published in the United States are fully legal. Whether Germany likes our laws is not my concern. --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Re: Scenes from the Supreme Court protests today
At 5:21 PM -0500 12/1/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: >http://www.mccullagh.org/theme/supreme-court-bush-gore-arguments.html I noticed the guy down on his knees...was he expecting the Republicans to give him a bullet to the base of the neck? Frankly, I think much of Al Gore's desperation comes from his realization that if he loses, he'll face prosecution for his treason vis-a-vis the Chinese. And, as someone pointed out to me recently, if Al Gore has no power, the Chinese won't need him around. In fact, he becomes a positive liability for them, in terms of testimony, plea bargains, memoirs, careless comments. They may choose to retire him with extreme prejudice. --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Re: Jim Bell
At 1:19 AM -0500 11/28/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: >The affidavit/complaint we link to at cluebot.com contains an >allegation from the Feds that Bell only 'fessed up to (in previous >interviews with l.e.) authoring the AP essays. > >I do not recall reading about, or writing about, Bell being charged >with deploying a working AP system. No, they've been prosecuting him >using far more mundane allegations of SSN misuse, stinkbombs, and >stalking. AP just gives it all spice, I suppose. More than spice, I think. I think _this_ time they plan to make AP part of their case. As your own article said, "When the feds searched Bell's home earlier this month, according to a one-page attachment to the search warrant, agents were looking for "items which refer to Assassination Politics."" I won't engage in the kind of speculation about how they might build their case, but I think this is where they are going. Granted, they will not try to claim that Bell was running a real AP lottery. But they may make claims that he was planning an assassination. Some jurors might be swayed by the language in AP and by the (alleged) utterance: "Say goodnight, Joshua." (Wasn't Joshua the computer in "War Games"?) > >On Mon, Nov 27, 2000 at 11:46:14PM -0500, R. A. Hettinga wrote: >> At 7:45 PM -0800 on 11/27/00, Tim May wrote: >> >> >> > (I think any of >> > us could be called as witnesses to refute a state claim that he was >> > deploying a real system!) >> >> Which, unfortunately, and IIRC, he actually *pled* to, nonetheless. >> > > Sheesh. No, I don't recall any such plea. Inasmuch as AP is some years off into the future, as even Bell would probably acknowledge (and may have acknowledged, if one dredges up all of his posts and looks at them carefully), I doubt he'd make a plea agreement that he had deployed a working AP system. I think AP was just hovering on the periphery in the first two rounds. This time they may try to make it a more central part of some case. Hence my comment that some of us may be called by the defense to explain why AP could not possibly be an operational system at this time. --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
"Needs killing"
At 10:36 AM -0800 11/24/00, Ray Dillinger wrote: > >The "Needs Killing" verbiage you see here, I think, is mostly from >people who, correctly or not, tend to think in terms either of there >not being any governments, or in terms of the government being so >ineffective that they are effectively in an ungoverned state. > No, you're still not up on the past traffic on this list. Which makes having you be an _interpreter_ all the more strange. Saying "Gun grabbers need killing" is a statement about what is moral. It doesn't depend on whether government is effective or not, or whether it exists or not. --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Re: Public Key Infrastructure: An Artifact...
At 1:25 PM -0500 11/20/00, R. A. Hettinga wrote: >At 12:10 PM -0500 on 11/20/00, Arnold G. Reinhold wrote: > > >> If CAs >> included a financial guarantee of whatever it is they are asserting >> when they issue a certificate, then all these problems would go away. > >Right. > >Like Ellison (and Metzger :-)) have said for years now, the only >"assertions" worth making are financial ones. "Identity", biometric/meat, >or otherwise, is only a proxy for asset protection anyway. > >I claim you can do this on the net without the current mystification of >identity that exists in the financial system, using bearer asset >cryptography, among other things, but that's another discussion altogether. And I have been asserting for years that _belief_ is all that matters. Or, more carefully put, that all issues of lawyers, backing by gold, financial instruments, escrow, bonds, etc. are issues of "How is belief affected?" One can think of many examples of where issues of identity, home address, name of lawyers, credit ratings, amount of a bond, etc. are really issues of belief in some outcome. One _believes_ that someone with a verifiable home and business address is more likely to be collected from (in a transaction or legal judgement) than someone with only a pseudonym. And one _believes_ that someone one has met is, for all intents and purposes, who he says he is (or, rather, that a key he represents to be his wills serve as adequate I.D. for future transactions.) A financial bond, or guarantee, is only one aspect of belief. Perhaps an important one, but only a subset. Belief is all. "All cryptography is about belief." --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Re: identity-as-bits vs. identity-as-meat
At 11:14 AM -0800 11/16/00, Ray Dillinger wrote:
>According to current law in all nations (as far as I know),
>identity is meat. One person has one identity, and the
>identity is persistent and lifelong. All law is based on
>this assumption.
Not so fast. Corporations sign legally-binding contracts every day.
Institutions enter into leases, contracts, agreements, and other
legally-binding arrangements. And the issue of their "identity" is
not a matter of _meat_.
We don't absolve Boeing of contracts because the guy who signed a
contract, or even the N guys, are dead.
Q.E.D., signatures are more than just meat.
And Boeing's _identity_, vis-a-vis things it signs, is more than just meat.
Usually we say that Boeing's signing officers/authorities, those who
enter the signatures on relevant documents, are authorized to do so
by Boeing. There is much case law about all of this, I'm sure. (I've
read anecdotal reports about how corporate mergers involve large
teams of lawyers and officers of all parties signing a blizzard of
documents, and in carefully controlled order so as to minimized
chances for deadlock or fraud. A complicated protocol, one which
crypto may _someday_ be part of.)
A guy somewhere in Boeing who uses his PGP signature on some document
is neither assumed automatically to be committing Boeing to some
contract ("...it depends") nor would his death (the meat is gone)
mean that Boeing is free to ignore some contract ("...it depends").
I'm obviously not a lawyer. Some here are. But this is still a
specialty area. Moreover, this is very little relevant case law.
Schneier's warnings are useful, but, as others have said, is obvious
to nearly anyone. We on this list began talking about this issue in
1992. There will be much case law, much role for the crypto
equivalient of "handwriting experts," as the years go by.
And we can expect a spectrum of signing technologies and strengths.
For example, the mundane auto-signing which someone may use for their
e-mail is substantially less persuasive ("probative," I think the
lawyers would say) than an ultra-high-security, backed-with-a-bond
key which Boeing's Legal Department uses to digitally sign sensitive
papers.
I believe Greg Broiles is still working for Signet Assurance,
www.sac.net, which is one company tackling parts of this problem.
Whether they will be a dominant player is of course unknown to me.
Anyway, lots of issues. But "meat" is one of the least important issues.
--Tim May
--
(This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the
election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Re: the ballot
At 7:19 PM +0100 11/14/00, Tom Vogt wrote: >text in german, but I guess everyone will get the point... > >finally, we have a copy of the *real* official ballot... > > >http://www.autsch.de/sdw_111300.html > We've been seeing this joke every day since late last week. And, though it's undeniably funny, it grossly misrepresents the ballot issue. In fact, the "butterfly ballot" issue has been put on the back burner by the Democrat vermin. They are putting their efforts into re-sampling and re-counting and fiddling with the ballots in Volusia County, Broward County, Dade County, and Palm Beach County. The Democrat untermenchen are even trying to overrule the local canvassing boards which have said they "see no point" in a manual recount. (Broward County, for example, a heavily Democrat-infested county, only turned up 4 "found" votes for Gore in a laborious manual fiddling-with of the paper ballots. Hence the canvassing board voted to not expend more time and money fiddling with the entire county's ballots. The Democrat Gorehoppers are going to court to force them to.) The whole charade is delicious to watch. --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Re: Bush Florida lead dwindles toward zero...
At 5:08 AM -0500 11/12/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >Bush actually lost votes, a very bad omen for him. > >Partially detached chads tend to come off during >repeated runs through the tabulating machinery. > >This recount is occurring without a court order, >it's provided for by Florida law. Vulis, you're the same commie fool you were a a couple of years ago. Your kind has earned liquidation. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Democrat FUD: "If our lead does not mount, you must re-count!"
At 2:43 PM -0500 11/11/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: >On Sat, Nov 11, 2000 at 09:05:54AM -0800, Tim May wrote: >> Hilarious. Things are falling apart better and with more acrimony >> than I'd hoped. >[...snip...] >> And so it goes, with recounts, judicial adjustments, do overs, and >> other such things requested in dozens, then hundreds, then thousands >> of counties. > >As much as I'd appreciate, purely from the perspective of continued >amusement, this perpetual election to continue, I suspect it won't. > >At least some Dems are publicly telling Al to back down: >http://www.perpetualelection.com/article.pl?sid=00/11/11/090229 > >If Al's stated litigiousness becomes perceived as a liability, we >might see a kind of trip from Capitol Hill to the Naval Observatory to >tell Al enough is enough. The irony is that one of the senators most >tempermentally likely to do so is, of course, the Dem VP candidate. * Stage One of the FUD Campaign, Wednesday morning: "They found a whole box of ballots in an inner city, Democratic-leaning, pre-school! This will throw the election to Gore." (quickly turned out that this alleged ballot box contained stationery supplies) * Stage Two of the FUD Campaign, Wednesday evening: "Thousands of elderly Jewish voters were tricked by the confusing ballot into voting for Pat Buchanan." (turned out that, based on interviews, nearly every Jew in Palm Beach County claims to have accidentally voted for Buchanan, or double-voted. The numbers don't support this, and other counties had spoiled ballots, too. A Republican-leaning county in northern Florida had 22,000 spoiled ballots.) * Stage Three of the FUD Campaign, all day Thursday and continuing: "At least 20,000 ballots were spoiled because elderly Jewish Democrats got confused and tried to vote for Gore after discovering they accidentally voted for Buchanan. We demand a re-vote!" * Stage Four of the FUD Campaign, current: "We demand a manual recount. Two counts, the first one and then the state-mandated machine recount, are not enough. We are certain that if certain counties are counted again, and again, that the extra votes we need will be found." [As Jesse Jackson and Johnnie Cockroach might singsong: "If our lead does not mount, you must re-count!'] * Stage Five of the FUD Campaign, ongoing: "The whole Electoral Thing is a throwback to the whitemale patriarchy. What matters is the popular vote, the first one, before Bush temporarily took the lead by manipulating the recounts in New Mexico, Wisconsin, Iowa, and other states. The Peeples spoke on Tuesday night!" A lot of Democrats need to be dealt with when this is (temporarily) through. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: A successful lawsuit means Gore wins!
At 9:23 AM -0500 11/11/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >FoxNewsChannel has announced George Dubya Bush will >make a pre-emptive court strike by challenging >manual recounts. This, following warning Gore not >to challenge results in court. > >These recounts are provided by state law, and are >not being done for any court. > >Bush's objection is that people are subject to >corruption, unlike tabulating devices. > >Dubya's new motto: "I trust in machines, not people." I trust more in machines for counting machine ballots than I trust in local politicians counting machine ballots. The Democrat Party is just trying to steal the election. Blood in the street is about to flow. No wonder the Democrat Party has been trying so hard to disarm us. --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.
A New Crisis in Palm Beach County, Florida
Thursday November 9 10:42 PM ET Votes for Buchanan Lost By Lisa Ander Spooner TALLAHASSEE, Florida (Routers) - A new vote crisis has appeared in Palm Beach County. Ten thousand votes for Patrick Buchanan appear to be missing. Based on interviews with elderly Jewish yentas, at least 14,000 of them claimed they mistakenly voted for Patrick Buchanan (see millions of earlier stories). And yet only 4,000 of these alleged Buchanan votes were actually counted for Buchanan. What, people are asking, happened to the other 10,000 votes for Buchanan? "I mistakenly voted for Pat Buchanan," said Miriam Rabinstein, formerly of Brooklyn, "and I want to know what happened to my vote." She went on to say, "All of my friends mistakenly voted for Buchanan, and everyone from our condo voted mistakenly for Buchanan. You want I should tell you that Buchanan should have gotten 14,000 votes?" Election officials acknowledge that informal opinion polls by the 13,200 reporters swarming through Palm Beach County show that most elderly Jews voted for Buchanan. They cannot explain what happened to the missing 10,000 trick votes.
Re: A successful lawsuit means Gore wins!
At 9:13 PM -0500 11/9/00, Marc Wohler wrote: >Do these folks need killing too? Not based on just their stupidity, as their own stupidity per se is not violative of the rights of others. If and when they act to steal the property or rights of others, via food stamps or welfare or whatever, then of course they need killing. The crack hoe who takes my tax money to fill her crack pipe should be exterminated like the rat she is. Ditto for the gun grabber, the election stealing politician, etc. --Tim May (By the way, please consider the usual convention of commenting _after_ a comment you are quoting, so respondents won't have to do the inclusion for you.) > >At 07:22 PM 11/9/00 , Tim May wrote: >> >> >>Fact is, voting is serious business. Those who show up dazed and >>confused and punch too many holes in their ballot are an example of > >social Darwinism. > > > >I have no sympathy for stupid people. > > -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: A successful lawsuit means Gore wins!
At 7:05 PM -0500 11/9/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >James "too damn bad about the 19,000" Baker >ain't no piece of cake either, FYI. He's right about the "19,000 spoiled ballots." Four years ago there were 16,000 spoiled ballots in the same district, and that was with lower overall turnout. Fact is, voting is serious business. Those who show up dazed and confused and punch too many holes in their ballot are an example of social Darwinism. I have no sympathy for stupid people. > >Buchanan now says most of his Palm Beach County >votes are actually Gore's. Unless he was bugging the voting booths and had ways of knowing the true thoughts of those voting, he had no way of knowing this. > >Pat Buchanan and Jesse Jackson united!o And me, too. We all want a race war. (I'm sort of hoping Gore manages to get his shysters to get the election thrown his way...then the shooting war can start in earnest.) --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: A successful lawsuit means Gore wins!
At 5:24 PM -0500 11/9/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >Spooky Cypherpunk Niggar Tim May Moroned: >#And, of course, Palm County will _not_ be given a >#second chance to vote in this election. I guarantee it. > >It's either that or the choice you liked even less. Oh, I _like_ that other choice. Trust me. When I hear Jesse Jackson saying that unless the Palm Beach voters are given the chance to have a new vote there will be a race war, I rejoice. I was just reading in misc.survivalism that some folks in Florida are saying that if Al Gore and his Voters of Color succeed in twisting the courts into stealing the election, that white folks will start killing. Music to my ears. The fuse is burning on the powder keg. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: A successful lawsuit means Gore wins!
At 11:03 PM -0500 11/8/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >Wow, NBC reports 19,000 Palm Beach County ballots >were discarded because _two_ holes were punched, >presumably by people confused by the illegally >formatted ballot. Buchanun received three times >the votes expected. Earth to George: that the ballots were discarded does not mean anything for the vote total already reported. Those 19,000 ballots, if this is true, will simply vanish into the great black hole of defective ballots (more than one vote per category, torn, etc.). 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: Al Gore is only 630 votes away from winning the election
At 3:49 AM -0500 11/8/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: >With 99.9 percent of the votes in Florida counted, Al Gore is only >630 votes away from winning the presidency. The Florida Department >of State reports -- in numbers updated in the last five minutes -- >that George W. Bush won 2,898,865 votes with Gore scoring 2,898,235. I'm watching Jesse Jackson on CNN, saying he and others (Al Sharpton, etc.) will be rallying to investigate "irregularities" in Florida. They plan marches. Both sides are now scrambling to find the extra votes they need. I wouldn't be at all surprised if both sides don't turn up "undiscovered" votes. Or if both sides don't sue to invalidate entire blocs of votes (from certain precincts). The longer the recount goes on, the more suspect the final tally, ironically enough. The one good thing out of this circus is that neither party will have the "mandate" to push for lots of new laws. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Democrat Delay Elects Dead Man
At 11:17 PM -0500 11/7/00, R. A. Hettinga wrote: >At 7:46 PM -0800 on 11/7/00, Tim May wrote: > > >> (if he was appointed >> by Democrats, the jig's up) > >He was Gebhart's former chief of staff... > >:-). It looks like the extra 3 hours did the job in the Democrat-heavy precincts. The dead man, Mel Carnahan, has narrowly edged-out John Ashcroft. By the way, none of the news services I can find are reporting the "overturning" of this extension some have reported here...anyone have solid dope on this heavily-doped race? I know the Democrat criminal Richard Daley rigged it so that dead people would vote for the criminal JFK (terminated with extreme prejudice a few years later), but now we have the spectacle of Democrat criminals keeping the voting booths longer in Democrat zones so that a dead man could _win_. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Courts interfering with election
Late news: Just saw Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri calling for an investigation into "criminal voting fraud" by the Democrat political machine in St. Louis and the lower court judge (if he was appointed by Democrats, the jig's up). Ashcroft faces a very, very, very close election, and that extra blast of welfare roll voters may have been enough to defeat him. Mighty niggardly of the Democrats, I'd say. Spooky, in fact. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Courts interfering with election
At 10:07 PM -0500 11/7/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >TimMay Moroned: >#And what is wrong with simply closing the lines at the closing time. >#Put a cop or other official at the end of the line and say: "You >#arrived at 8:01. Polls are closed. Everyone ahead of you will be >#allowed in to vote, but you are too late." > >Why, that's already been answered. > >See text about woman who tried to vote all day, >starting at 10AM. > >Any more questions? "Asked and answered." Nearly 80 million people have already voted today, without incident. That this woman Takikawaladan Shakiradon _claims_ to have been turned away at 10 a.m. has nothing to do with extending hours in St. Louis. If in her crack haze she went to the wrong place, or had never registered at all, or was registered under the name she uses on her _other_ welfare claim, does anyone really think that she'll somehow be voting between when the polls _would have closed_ and whenever they eventually do? Get real. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Courts interfering with election
At 9:34 PM -0500 11/7/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >Well, let's see if there's a perfectly valid reason for the extension: > >http://www.foxnews.com/election_night/states/mo/hours.sml >#Mahina Nightsage, 41, said she attempted to vote at 10 a.m. but >#was told by an election judge that she was not registered for >#that polling place. Nightsage said she arrived at the board's >#downtown office by 12:30 and by 3:15 p.m. had not yet been able >#to vote. Ah, yes, so we extend the hours in a liberal welfare mecca because Latisha Shabombaweka wasn't properly registered at 10 IN THE MORNING. Yeah, makes sense to me, in a liberal kind of way. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Courts interfering with election
At 9:14 PM -0500 11/7/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >commerce wrote home.com ># The obvious complaint is that only select polling areas were >#given extended hours, when it would have been just as easy to >#extend voting hours for the entire region > >If all polling places had their hours extended, >does TimMay withdraw his objections? No, though this would be a good first step. The obvious issue is that those in the suburbs were more careful to schedule their voting period to match the preannounced poll hours. The "get out the vote" last-minute calls to the welfare chiselers, the addicts, the crack hoes, etc., produced a last-minute surge. I say fuck them and fuck any court officers who pull off this last-minute vote grab. "In a last-minute development, polling places in Newport Beach, La Jolla, and Pebble Beach will remain open for two additional hours, following legal calls by the California Republican Party. Democrats are furious, and are demanding that polling places in Watts, South-Central LA, and Oakland be kept open _three_ additional hours." Rules are rules. People should plan according to those rules. Last-minute surges as precinct captainst call on their troops should not be rewarded by keeping the polls open longer. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: election
At 8:05 PM -0600 11/7/00, Mac Norton wrote: >The women in Michigan did it, the women in Penn. did it, >the women in Fla. did it. Wake up punks, it's the wimmens. >They rule. Yep. The "why can't we all just get along, it's for the children, guns are icky, we want more health care, you men leave the seat up, capitalism exploits womyn" commies and fellow travellers. The mother of all gender gaps, so to speak, is opening up. Chalk it up to too much democracy, too many things up for popular vote by the herd. One good note, though, CNN is reporting that Ohio went to Bush and that gun owners probably had a major effect. Women vs. gun owners. Why am I not surprised? If and when it comes to us shooting to protect our rights, the PMS set had better work on their marksmanship. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Courts interfering with election
At 8:52 PM -0500 11/7/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >TimMay was entirely silent on why he objects to this time extension. You lying sack of shit. I've made my objections very, very clear. I need to find out who you are and where you live. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Courts interfering with election
At 8:35 PM -0500 11/7/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >TimMay wrote: >#I thought I was jaded, but this is too much even for me to believe. ># >#A judge in St. Louis has ordered the polls kept open later, until 10 >#pm local time. The effect will be to let more inner city, >#Democrat-leaning voters vote. > >What a lame-ass complaint. > >For some reason, certain polling areas got jammed up, >as in long lines. The court agreed to keep the polls >open longer so the people could vote. It didn't matter >who the people might vote for, despite the Democrats >asking for the extended hours. Yes, the Democrats pushed for this. In other states, the unions gave their members the day off. At least this is the established way to buy votes. Having the courts extend the hours so that more inner city mutants can stagger down to the polls is inexcusable. > >The Republicans actually went into federal court to >try and block this, and failed. And it would serve the Democretins right if an appeals court ultimately reverses the decision to extend the polling hours and throws out _all_ of the tainted votes. > >Did you expect a Republican judge to say no since >the people who might be unable to vote by the normal >deadline were Democrats? I expect "The polling hours are 7 a.m. to 8 p.m." to be upheld. People arrange their schedules accordingly. If they work hours such that they cannot be at the polling places during these hours, they obtain absentee ballots. Or they take personal time off of work. Or they go in an hour later. Etc. > >What's your objection to people voting? Try not to >mention a political party in your reply. No, my objection is a change in the rules at the 11th hour, instigated by one party. I would be just as incensed if Palm Springs and West Palm Beach had changes made to their voting situations as a result of Republican legal actions a few hours before the polls were to close. As to your insults lobbed at me, _you're_ the one hiding behind a nym. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
RE: Courts interfering with election
Ernest Hua has asked me to call him a numbskull directly. Apparently he did not like my "someone" reference. So I am obliging. >And he says he will not send me anything he doesn't mind having >shared with the rest of the list. And in a later message he defended >the St. Louis legal action by saying "The new rules do not say >"Republicans not allowed during those two hours". His message follows: At 5:44 PM -0800 11/7/00, Ernest Hua wrote: >Look, if you want to call me a "numbskull" feel free to do that to >me directly. And, I will surely not send you something I am not >willing to share with the rest of the list. You aren't that special. > >Ern Retardation is a dangerous thing. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Courts interfering with election
At 4:18 PM -0800 11/7/00, Tim May wrote: >I thought I was jaded, but this is too much even for me to believe. > >A judge in St. Louis has ordered the polls kept open later, until 10 >pm local time. The effect will be to let more inner city, >Democrat-leaning voters vote. > >The rural and suburban polling places will close at the normal times. > >Whew. > >Democrats are elated that more of their supporters will be able to >vote in the extra hours. > >A similar measure was turned down in another state (Kansas?). > >Democrats in other urban areas are hustling to see if they can get >their own bought judges involved in the process. > >A stunning theft of the election. If these "late Democrats" turn out >to be the margin of victory, this will energize the anger of the >Republicans. I just had a Cypherpunks numbskull (who was also actively on the wrong side in the Elian debate) send me private mail asking why I would object to this. His exact words were: "It's hard to imagine that someone quite disgusted with our pseudo-democratic government will argue against ensuring that everyone has a chance to vote ..." Sometimes I despair. We may need to make a list of the Cypherpunks idiots here and "mark them for deletion" during the next GC. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Jim Bell's House Being Searched
At 3:53 PM -0500 11/6/00, Me wrote: >From: "Tim May" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> >Just received word from Jim that there are some law >> > enforcement types going through a search of his house >> In any case, which of us will be next? > >If its you, I expect I will hear about it on CNN before >Cypherpunks. Unlikely to make CNN. A couple of raids I know about in other California towns, including Modesto and Taft, never got any attention from the national press. It takes a "high visibility" case, like the black actor blown away in L.A., or the black Haitian blown away in NYC, to generate national interest. A white guy getting shot by cops is just part of the business of getting rid of right wing extremists. Amerika--obey it or leave it. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Jim Bell's House Being Searched
At 11:25 AM -0800 11/6/00, Blanc Weber wrote: >Just received word from Jim that there are some law enforcement types going >through a search of his house, apparently with 'authorization'. He was >downstairs when his mother let them in, so says he didn't know what their >explanation was for their appearance, what they were looking for, or what >his mother had to say to them or vice-versa. > Maybe his use of Mapquest and other commonly available tools to identify those CIA safe houses in Oregon are the issue. As with the "Ilegal to Possess Hacking or Reverse Engineering Tools" laws, perhaps Mapquest is now on the contraband list. Or maybe John Young's spook father-in-law has finally decided that enough is enough and that it's time to crack down on all of these liberty-spouting radicals. In any case, which of us will be next? --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Applying California law to ICANN
At 12:15 PM -0800 11/5/00, jim bell wrote: > >Other entities, like churches for example, exist within California but >aren't especially controlled by California law. ICANN probably "needs" no >greater regulation than a church does: The building it's in will probably >follow California building codes, and the people who work there will pay US >and California taxes. But other than this, it is unclear why ICANN should >even be controllable by California law? If companies and even health clubs are subjected to Calfornia's various laws about discrimination, hate crimes, and other political correctness issues, why would ICANN, a California corporation _not_ be subject to these various rules and regulations? (By including "health clubs," I don't mean building code or health regulations. I mean things like the law banning gyms from discriminating against women, though women-only clubs are still legal. The chick lawyers got this exemption put into law...something about "providing protected spaces for womyn." Many other examples abound of California law being used as an instrument of majoritarian herd rule politics.) It may well be that political activists discover this whole ICANN thing and realize they have a golden opportunity to have California laws applied to black/delist sites they dislike, organizations they think are racist, etc. The Southern Law Poverty Center, the Simon Wiesenthal Hate Center, and other ZOG-controlled commie organizations will likely be going into overtime. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
The Market for Privacy
At 11:41 AM -0500 11/1/00, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,39895,00.html
>
>Privacy Firm Tries New Gambit
>by Declan McCullagh ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
>2:00 a.m. Nov. 1, 2000 PST
>
>WASHINGTON -- Zero Knowledge Systems seems to have finally realized a
>harsh truth: Internet users don't like to pay extra to protect their
>privacy.
This is a recurring theme, and one we've talked about many times.
Fact is, most people don't think they need security. Most people
don't even think they need backups. Until their hard disk crashes.
And so on. It's a tough sell in either case.
This is why the market for crypto and security and anonymity has
tended to be at the "margins" of society: porn, warez, freedom
fighting, etc. Such has it always been, such shall it always be.
Targetting the mainstream is a tough sell.
(The most widely-deployed bits of crypto are in places where huge
deals were cut with browser makers, e.g., SSL, Verisign, etc. The
customer is only vaguely aware that such things are happening. No
sale to Joe Average is needed. Probably this is the way Web proxies
will ultimately be sold.)
ZKS was just one of many companies attempting to sell privacy tools
to "Joe Average," and his little daughter Suzy Average (pictured in
ZKS Freedom ads...). Well, Joe doesn't do much with his home computer
except check some sites and maybe download a few porn images from
Danni's Hotbox when Suzy has gone to bed and the wife is passed out
on the sofa.
_Could_ ZKS Freedom help Joe a little? Maybe, but it's not something
even on his radar screen to worry about. His bigger concern is having
Suzy or the wifey find the paltry pieces of porn he purloined.
Or he's at work and his boss has just announced that several
employees have been fired for using the company's networks for
checking sports scores, downloading porn, usng Napster, etc.
These are Joe Average's _real_ concerns about privacy. Cute ads about
little girls needing their privacy probably won't sell ZKS Freedom to
Joe Average.
ZKS may do better by bundling Freedom with Danni's Hard Drive
accounts! "Your porn is downloaded to you in "Plain Brown Wrapper"
format, disguised to look like a marketing report containing the key
words you specify. Your boss will think it's business, your wife will
be bored."
(No, I'm not suggesting this as any kind of real product. The market
is just too small, and downloading porn or Napster songs at work is a
lose for many good reasons. The proper solution is even more
straightforward: only fools download porn at company sites, and they
deserve to be fired. And if Joe Average doesn't have his own
_personal_ computer at home, they're cheap enough. No reason Little
Suzy should be doing her homework on the machine he has his porn on.
And even if he does, encrypted partitions are trivial to set up.
Plus, removable CD-RWs and Zips. "Zip--for when you don't want your
porn discovered by your wife!")
The second major use for privacy tools is preventing the "dossier
society" effect, where one's words in alt.sex.gerbils are archived
for all time and are seen by prospective employers, Senate
confirmation panels, etc. This is a likely market for ZKS Freedom.
Ah, except that utterly free and easy to use services like MyDeja and
MyYahoo and suchlike are dominant in this application area ("space").
It is routine to see "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" posts in nearly all
newsgroups. While these are not cryptographically robust, it's
unlikely these will ever be linked to true names. Especially as they
may be set up on the fly, through proxies, etc.
Still, some fraction of people will pay for Freedom-type nyms.
Probably not $50 a year, as that is a significant fraction of their
entire ISP bill. But not a lot of people. And they won't pay much.
The real market for robust security and privacy tools is, as always, elsewhere.
The _interesting_ market has always been for those who
are--demonstrably!--willing to pay big bucks to get on a plane to fly
to the Cayman Islands or Luxembourg to open an offshore account. For
those who are actively interested in untraceable VISA cards. For
those selling arms. For those trafficking in illegal thoughts.
In short, for crypto anarchy.
Not for fluff.
Will the new ZKS business model work? Maybe. But as Simson Garfinkel
points out in the article Declan wrote, this may take years to
develop. Until then, tough sledding.
MojoNation seems to be a lower burn-rate run at the real low hanging fruit.
--Tim May
--
-:-:-:-:-:-:-:
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
"Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: California bars free speech of those cutting deals ...
At 2:55 AM +0100 11/1/00, Anonymous Remailer wrote: > >California has "shut down"--through a threatening letter--a site >>which matches up folks who are willing to say theyll vote for Nader >>in states where Gore is sure to win if other folks who had hoped to > >So now it is illegal to provide a public forum with specific >capabilities. > >Is it also illegal for me to privately arrange this with a particular >sheevoter from the other state ? Gangs can legally call for >voters to vote for them and not for the other gang, but voters >themselves cannot talk to each other and make arrangements that they >see fit. > Just another nail in the coffin of free speech in America. Perhaps it is best if Nader wins, or, failing that, one of the Gush-Bore tag team. The worse things get, the faster the collapse. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Zero Knowledge changes business model (press release)
e first level of protection is for Alice to reveal as little as she wishes and to not trust others with information which may damage her. So she should not give out her passwords over the phone, or online. And she should not reveal her AIDS diagnosis by buying AIDS drugs at her local pharmacy. And she should not be ordering books on bomb-making and terrorism through Amazon. However, once Alice has given Bob this damaging information, the jig is up. Bob knows her passwords or her AIDS status or her preferences in books, whatever. And Charles may know other things. And Dave still other things. Now, can any protocol stop Bob and Charles and Dave from pooling their information they each have collected on Alice? Nope. The point is to unlink Alice's identity with the items she purchases, the medicines she needs, the books she buys. Which is why remailers, digital cash, proxies, and suchlike are interesting. Perhaps ZKS is planning to unveil robust versions of all of these things. If so, I applaud them. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Zero Knowledge changes business model to Split KeyEscrow(NSA-Key (press release)
At 12:27 PM -0500 10/31/00, Adam Shostack wrote: >On Tue, Oct 31, 2000 at 04:07:18PM +0100, cyphrpnk wrote: >| > >Privacy is good business. Companies in every industry are >| > >realizing they must institute the proper privacy policies, >| > >practices and infrastructures in order to succeed in >| > >today's digital economy. Zero-Knowledge Managed Privacy >| > >Services provides the tools and strategies that enable >| > >business to establish private customer relationships and >| > >earn consumer trust while ensuring legislative compliance >| > >and mitigating risk. >| legistlative Compliance... >| Guess Lew Giles or the CSE came to visit > >By legislative compliance, we mean compliance with laws. There are no >key escrow laws in Canada. There is a privacy law, bill C-6, and we >will help companies comply with that. Let's look at the key splitting aspect. Alice has some secrets she wishes to protect with your product. Or Alice is communicating with Bob and wishes the contents kept secret. Standard stuff. Of course, she could just use conventional PKS tools. Or even Freedom, should she wish the fact of the communication itself to be protected. Standard stuff. But let us say she, for whatever reason, uses key splitting. Charles and Debby are the holders of the split keys. (If either Alice or Bob is the holder of one of the split keys, this is as if the key is not split at all, of course. Modulo some slight work factor issues.) "Ensuring legislative compliance" now talks on a meaning which is completely separate from whether key escrow laws have been passed. Charles and Debby can be suboenaed (not sure what the Canadian, or Iranian, or Baloneystan equivalents are). This subpoena may be in secret, unknown to Alice. Or Alice and Bob. And this process may not happen with just subpoenas. It will likely happen with national security agencies. Without Alice knowing. This is what happens when Alice or any other customer of your product uses "trusted third parties." GAK beats crack any day. This is the danger of building a "trusted third parties" system. And is precisely the reason the United Kingdom was campaigning for this kind of system. By building precisely the tools they and other governments would need to implement such a system, you are making such a system more likely to happen. --Tim May --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Zero Knowledge changes business model (press release)
At 10:03 AM -0500 10/31/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: >> >>ZERO-KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS INTRODUCES MANAGED PRIVACY SERVICES >>TO SOLVE THE PRIVACY CHALLENGES OF BUSINESSES >> >> >>Montreal -- October 31, 2000 -- Zero-Knowledge(R) Systems, >>the leading developer of privacy solutions, today >>introduced its new Managed Privacy Services(TM) offering to >>solve the privacy challenges of businesses and enable >>enterprise to thrive in a privacy-conscious climate. >>Delivering a unique combination of technology, policy and >>strategy expertise, Zero-Knowledge Managed Privacy Services >>(MPS) enables clients to turn privacy into a competitive >>advantage by leveraging rich data resources while building >>stronger and more profitable relationships with customers, >>employees and partners. MPS is based on responsible and >>ethical information management in accordance with relevant >>legislation and industry standards. "Relevant legislation"? In Canada, in Iran, in Denmark, where? Surely ZKS is not claiming that they will be somehow targetting each instance of their product to specific countries. If not, if the product is a general one, then just _whose_ "relevant legislation" applies? (I presume this is related to their split key/key escrow/"trusted third parties" nonsense.) >> >>* ASSESS AND ADVISE -- Managed Privacy Services begins with >>a thorough assessment of each client's data storage and >>usage patterns, as well as their business objectives. From >>this assessment, recommendations are made regarding areas >>where data can be better utilized through the addition of a >>strong privacy layer, and areas of potential privacy risk >>are identified. This is beginning to sound like ZKS is restructuring itself as a consulting company, a la Arthur Anderson or the (now in the process of divorce) Kroll-O'Gara outfit. >> >>Zero-Knowledge is committed to deploying systems that are >>transparent and accountable. In keeping with this policy, >>MPS will incorporate third party verification and split >>encryption key structures Split encryption key. I think that says it all. >>, as well as provide consumers >>with access to white papers, independent auditors' reports >>or other materials that assure a company is doing what it >>claims. With MPS Zero-Knowledge strengthens its commitment >>to building responsible systems that empower consumers to >>control the disclosure and use of their personal >>information, while still enabling businesses to thrive in a >>data and relationship-driven marketplace. "Empower consumers"? "Responsible systems"? "Strengthens its commitment"? How about: -- no key escrow, no split keys, no trusted third parties -- public key crypto With strong crypto widely available, what business (or knowledgeable private person) is going to want or need this "ASSESS AND ADVISE" and "COMMIT AND CAPITULATE" (ok, I'm changing their stages) stuff/ I can't see how a large company, like an Intel or an Amgen, is going to move away from mathematically robust PKS systems and adopt some throwback to the 1940s, some kind of split key or key escrow system. And I can't see how Joe Consumer is going to pay for the (apparent) "review" of his (presumed) needs and then get some key escrow package tailored to his (presumed) needs. So, what sort of customer is this product tailored for? Some middle-sized company which is clueless on crypto and which wants hand-holding? Some company in a country which _requires_ key escrow? Is ZKS setting itself up to be the premier supplier of key escrow and LEAF tools? Sounds like it. The "relevant legislation" language is the real kicker. Sounds like the many former government types working at ZKS got the focus shifted from truly secure systems to basically uninteresting--and even pernicious!--systems which "meet the legitimate needs of law enforcement." Key escrow, in other words. "Big Brother Inside" Whew. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: NZ: Sweeping powers for spy agencies
At 6:36 AM -0500 10/30/00, John Young wrote: > >What is fascinating about this evolution is the screaming >by domestic victims when they learn that means and methods >are being applied to them that they wholeheartedly approve >when aimed at foreigners, immigrants, criminals and other >stigmatized targets such as radicals, anarchists, commies, >neo-nazis, dissidents and whoever is different from you and >me, well, no doubt you include me in your bullseye and me >you when we get a whiff of the terrifying scent spread >by the malodor-spreading criminal justice mongerers. Just to respond to this particular part of your good rant, the U.S. Government has not been pushing what we think of as Constitutional rights in other countries for many decades. (Yes, I understand that other countries are not bound by the U.S. Constitution...) For example: -- the aforementioned spying agreements...the U.S. gets around the limits imposed by the C. by having foreign governments do the spying, a la the UKUSA Agreement, etc. -- when the U.S. invades Somalia, they disarm the population -- when the U.S. moves into South America, as "advisors," they educate the secret police in how to create death squads, how to torture suspects, how to assassinate opposition leaders. (Cf. the CIA manuals, College of the Americas, direct testimony, etc.) -- when the U.S. casts its lot with the Zionists, the U.S. supports the forcible movement of Palestinians from their land -- similar anti-B.O.R. measures supported in other parts of Europe, most of Africa, much of Asia, including support for limitations on press freedom, local censorship (so long as it suppresses the opponents of "our" interests), licensing, etc. Basically, the position of U.S. officials is that the rights outlined in the Bill of Rights are meant to apply to U.S. persons. Somalians are to be disarmed, Columbians are to be assassinated, Palestinians are to be herded into camps, and so on. I'm not arguing that U.S.-style approaches should be extended by force into foreign countries, only that certainly the U.S. Government should not be party to setting up regimes inimical to our stated beliefs in what civil rights should be. ---Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Insurance: My Last Post
At 3:36 PM -0400 10/25/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: > > >It must have something to do with being Canadianized. Only folks from >Alberta seem to get it right. Not counting a certain someone, initials SB/SS, from British Columbia? --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Gort in granny-shades (was Re: Al Gore goes cypherpunk?)
At 10:14 AM -0400 10/24/00, R. A. Hettinga wrote: >http://www.rollingstone.com/sections/magazine/text/excerpt.asp?afl=rsn&lngFeatureID=120&lngStyleID > > >At 2:08 AM -0400 on 10/24/00, Declan McCullagh wrote that Albert, "Gort" >Gore, Jr., (a robot who would destroy the world to save it :-)) told the >Rolling Stone: > >> I loved The Matrix. > > >Innumeracy is as innumeracy does, I guess. And, unlike another, and equally >fictional, moron with a better clue about how the world works, "Gort's" >liking the Keanu Reeves neo-Platonist adolescent-hacker power fantasy The >Matrix is paradoxically, but utterly, consistent with his currently-closet >Luddist Socialism. No accounting for taste, of course, but I _loved_ "The Matrix." I'll leave it to others to decide whether I'm innumerate or not, whether I'm a luddite or not, and so on. Overall, it's up there in my Top 5 of SF films, with "2001," "Terminator 2," and "Blade Runner." Not necessarily in that order. Ihre Meilenzahl variiert vielleicht. > >For some reason, the very cartoon physics which made it popular was the >main thing which bugged me most about The Matrix, as it does in a lot of >other movies these days. Given that the characters were clearly described as being in a VR, and given that they "learned" to use the new rules they could access, the "cartoon physics" was very consistently done. As a physicist, I had no problems with it. > >So, ultimately, I suspect that the real reason that the libertarians and >crypto-anarchists I like to hang out with on the net rave about The Matrix >so much is because Neo gets to blow away so many cops, and in such >exquisite detail. Quake with better graphics. And, like Quake, what would >normally be considered murder in the "real" world doesn't "matter" so much, >because the cops are not "real", not actual human beings. They're just >software. Then count _this_ crypto anarchist as a counterexample to your point. > >Maybe, frankly, that's also why Albert, "Gort", Gore, Jr., a >died-in-the-hairshirt man-the-barracades Mailerian Crypto-Communist >disguised in a blue suit, white shirt, red tie, and, more recently, a >Ronald Reagan pomade -- when he's not disguised as a earth-toned >plaid-shirted pseudo-Gomer, or something else -- liked The Matrix so much. M > >In the meantime, the Matrix's supposedly masterful special effects, its >apparent main attraction, were, for the most part, pedestrian, and could >have been found in any music video -- or even commercial -- of the time. Actually, not so. The so-called "bullet time" effects hit the ads about the same time as "Teh Matrix" only because the tools and methods spread to the ad business faster than the film could be finished and distributed; in many cases, the same folks were taking what they'd learned and applying it to television. In any case, the proof is in the pudding. I certainly thought the effects were far from pedestrian. As to your not liking "The Matrix," fair enough. But using it as some kind of touchstone for everything that is bad in modern America is a bit of a reach. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: why should it be trusted?
At 11:36 PM -0700 10/22/00, Nathan Saper wrote: >-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- >Hash: SHA1 > >On Sun, Oct 22, 2000 at 10:59:51PM -0700, petro wrote: > >> >the health and well-being of its population. That is the purpose of >> >the government. >> >> Not in the United States of America it isn't. > > >> > >Then what is the purpose of our government? Not mob rule, not democracy. Go back and read the books you apparently skipped over in the 10th or 11th grade. The Constitution exists largely to circumscribe the powers of government and to head off precisely the kind of "50% plus 1" mobocracy you have consistently been advocating. In case this just doesn't make sense to you, read the Bill of Rights several times and reflect on what the various elements actually mean. Think about this when next you advocate using the democratic vote to seize private property by majoritarian rule. Frankly, I think I've read enough of you, Nathan Saper. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: why should it be trusted?
At 1:10 AM -0400 10/23/00, Dave Emery wrote: > > > Nobody dies without healthcare under our present system. Actually, many people do. What planet have you been living on? (I'm not arguing for "universal health care," or "socialized medicine," or Nathan Saper's "soak the giant corporations" scheme. I'm just disputing the point above, which is patently false.) Many do not have insurance, and do not receive care for various ailments until it's too late. Many do not have insurance and do not have annual physicals, or mammograms, or prostate exams, or pap smears, or any of the hundreds of such things. Some hospitals offers limited free services, some free clinics exist. But clearly many Americans are not receiving such care. And of course these "free services" are often a huge distance from _good_ healthcare. So much for "nobody dies without healthcare." > Sadly, at least for those of extreme libertarian bent that make >up the choir on this list, our society has chosen to pass laws that >require hospitals and to some degree other medical treatment facilities >to treat patients who cannot pay - mostly at their expense. ANYONE >with a life threatening or even just very serious medical condition can >walk into most any emergency room and get full medical treatment by law >even if there is no insurance and no money to pay. This is not true. Again, I have to question your connection to current events. Surely you have heard of folks being turned away at emergency room entrances and shipped off to the "public hospital"? There are many cases in many cities where people died in ambulances that had been turned away at the _nearest_ (or _better_) hospital and sent off on a 30-minute ambulance or taxicab ride to the "public" hospital in town. Again, I am not advocating that medicine be socialized or that hospitals be forced to treat those they choose not to treat. (Were it my hospital, I would not think highly of Men with Guns telling me I must give $10,000 worth of ER services to someone who won't pay me back and who has no insurance.) > > Of course, in the libertarian ideal universe someone not >completely indigent who had a genetic condition that made them high risk >might still be unable to get any kind of catastropic medical insurance >and might be wiped out of virtually all assets by a serious illness, >even one completely unrelated in any way to his genetic predisposition. > Yes...so? --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: CDR: Re: Nuclear waste
At 9:02 PM -0700 10/21/00, petro wrote: >May: >>5. Not that this is necessarily the best option. The domes in deep >>caves are perfectly fine. And there is much to be said for the >>Pournelle/Hogan solution: put the vitreous beads in concrete-filled >>drums, load them onto pallets, then park the pallets in neat rows >>and columns in the center of a 10 km by 10 km fenced area in the >>Mojave Desert of California. Very little rain (geological records >>and fossil lakes show this); certainly no significant flash >>flooding. Then erect signs, in many languages, and with >>skull-and-crossbones, saying: "This area is poisoned." Even the >>most bizarre devolution-to-savagery scenarios are unlikely to have >>wandering savages in the waterless Mojave trying to scavenge stuff >>out of sealed drums marked with skulls and crossbones! > > I've never really understood why we don't just put this stuff >in some *really* tough polycarbonate containers aboard "mature" >technology rockets and launch it into the biggest heat source in the >solar system. > > I realize that there is a lot of it, but still. This is a very old idea, rejected for good cause many, many years ago. Need I elaborate? --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Reading list
At 9:23 PM -0400 10/19/00, Me wrote: >From: "Tim May" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> Indeed. We used to have the reasonable expectation that nearly >> everyone on the list had some familiarity with the "classics." >For >> example... Vinge's "True Names." > >True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier: >A study of True Names, Vernor Vinge's critically acclaimed >novella that invented the concept of cyberspace, features that >complete text of the novella, as well as articles by Richard >Stallman, John Markoff, Hans Moravec, Patricia Maes, Timothy May, >and others. > >(cough cough)royalties(cough cough cough) Royalties? Not even an up-front fee. Nothing. (Not that I care about such things...) The editor, Jim Frenkel, told me several years ago that the piece had to be done over my Xmas vacation. I told him I could maybe get it done by January 10th or so. He reluctantly agreed. Three or four years later, the book is still not out. As the nerds like to say, "Grumble." So, if my article appears curiously dated, look to this several-year delay. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: why should it be trusted?
At 12:25 PM -0700 10/19/00, David Honig wrote: >At 05:48 PM 10/18/00 -0700, Nathan Saper wrote: >>So are you saying that there is nothing wrong with the government >>doing the corporations' dirty work? > >A govt has an obligation to secure the data it has collected >and not to share it. So perhaps we agree on this point: the >govt must not give out (do 'dirty work') data on citizens that it holds. >If an insurance (or bank or grocery or whatever) co. wants data, they can't >expect it from the govt. > >[Hmm... I hadn't thought about the morality of terraserver.. where you >can get pictures of your neighbors lots, taken by the govt] This issue has been discussed recently, in some newspaper articles. (Don't have a URL, as I was reading it casually, elsewhere.) It turned out that the government high-res photos were ideal for burglars to use to case properties for break-ins, to identify unsecured property in backyards, etc. And it's not a function of government to snoop like this, the Supreme Court's rulings notwithstanding. Ironically, when private actors do things like this, one can count on various government types to rush in with denunciations and lawsuits. Sort of the way the government cracks down on polluting vehicles while school districts and public bus agencies run the worst-polluting vehicles. Or the pension plans which Congress exempts itself from. Government always cracks own on others and exempts itself. Nothing surprising. We just shouldn't let it happen. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Reading list
At 12:57 PM -0400 10/19/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: >On Thu, Oct 19, 2000 at 07:53:19AM -0700, James A.. Donald wrote: >> Without property rights to separate one man's plan from another man's plan, >> only one plan can be permitted, and any pursuit of alternate goals, or >> pursuit of the same goals through alternate methods is "wrecking", and must >> be crushed. > >I might be tempted to agree with you, but I think David Friedman's >Machinery of Freedom (which I was reading last night) might have >something to say about the above. > >It should be required reading for all cpunx anyway (not saying you >haven't read it -- this is simply a general suggestion to the rest of >the list). Indeed. We used to have the reasonable expectation that nearly everyone on the list had some familiarity with the "classics." For example, Friedman's "Machinery of Freedom," Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson," Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom," Vinge's "True Names," Card's "Ender's Game," Rand's "Atlas Shrugged," Brunner's "Shockwave Rider," and maybe even some of the writings of Spooner, Benson, Von Mises, Tannehill, Hospers, and Rothbard. These works helped to establish a common vocabulary, a common set of core concepts. Not that everyone was a libertarian, let alone a Libertarian. But the core concepts were known, and those who didn't know about them were motivated to go off and look them up. We had fewer folks arguing for socialism in those days. Today, it's like, whoa, dude, like the insurance companies are, like, big meanies and they, like, have lots of money and so they should, like, be forced to help the little guys. And besides, like, socialism was never really given a good test. I mean, like, the stuff they're doing in Cuba is really rad. Like, they're _spanking_ private corporations! Of the half dozen or so clueless ranter who have appeared recently to argue that corporations are the real enemy, that government is just trying to do its job, that all crypto is broken anyway so why bother?, that free markets can't possibly work, and that crypto is for helping to force insurance companies to help the little guy, most of them are a waste of skin. --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 9:27 PM -0700 10/18/00, Nathan Saper 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. Your true colors have now been revealed. Simply robbery. It looks like the "autumn crop" is in full bloom. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Re: Re: why should it be trusted?
At 9:20 PM -0500 10/18/00, Neil Johnson wrote: >--- Original Message - >From: "Tim May" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > This is the way markets in general have always worked. Economists >> talk about "preference revealing" and "selective disclosure of >> information." >> > >But the Bob has no control of his risk (genetics), or at least not yet :). >The insurance company does. The insurance company does NOT have any control over Bob's risks! Whatever gave you that idea? All the insurance company can do is to estimate the risks and costs of treatment as best they can and then make Bob an offer on how much they will charge to promise to treat him if and when he gets sick or is injured. I am unable to find any gentler way to say this: a lot of you (Neil, Yardena, Nathan, Robert, etc.) are woefully ignorant of economics, markets, and the nature of a free society. In this insurance debate, several of you seem to think that Bob has some "right" to insurance...at the price _he_ or some committee thinks is "fair." Please read up on some basic economics--preferably not Marxist economics. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: A way to discourage advertising
At 6:23 PM -0700 10/18/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- > >Here's my idea of how to stop advertisers from using this mailing >list as an advertising channel: > >If everytime anyone saw junk mail here, they wrote to the address >of the sender and/or the address where you send an e-mail if >you're interested, and told them how annoyed you were. > >Just an idea. Gee, what an original idea. Better yet, sort all toad.com messages into its own folder and delete its contents regularly. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Insurance (was: why should it be trusted?)
At 9:11 PM -0500 10/18/00, Neil Johnson wrote: >Two Things: > >1. It sounds like to me that there is no room for human compassion in >crypto-anarchy. > (Seems like we will all end up sitting in our "compounds" armed to the >teeth and if anybody comes along we either blow'em to bits or pay them >anonymous digital cash >to go away). Another socialist simp-wimp heard from. Lots of socialists to be dealt with and disposed of. I wonder who will stoke the furnaces? --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Re: 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: 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 6:01 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: I created the "Al Gore created the Internet" story
At 5:12 PM -0400 10/18/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: >At 12:22 10/18/2000 -0700, jim bell wrote: >>I ask this, what I believe would be an excellent idea for an article: Why >>didn't the Internet develop even faster than it actually did? 9600 bps >>modems existed in 1986, not all that far in performance behind 28Kbps units. >>By 1986, numerous clones of the IBM PC and AT existed. > >Internet deployment happened at a near-doubling every year starting >around 1993, coincident with the deployment of the web. > >Most computers in 1986 weren't up to it. Many of us were using Apple >II computers with something like 278x192 resolution (in single hi >res mode). Imagine such a beast doing networking. Ick. To Bell's point, by 1986 many people _were_ on the Internet. Modems were typically 1200. 2400-baud modems were available. 9600s may have existed (Racal-Vadic, others), but they were too expensive for casual use. My first ISP was (according to him) the first ISP to offer accounts to "civilians" (non-academic, non-company-paid, non-governmental). This was Portal Communications, out of Cupertino, CA. I got my account in '88 or so. A Mac Plus with a 1200 baud modem, replaced a year later with a Mac IIci and a 2400 baud modem. And so on. BTW, my little Mac Plus had more than adequate screen resolution to handle my mail program (pine), newsreader (tin), and misc. word processors, outline processors, and suchlike. (As a side note, John Little shut down his ISP service in the early 90s, due to obvious competition from Netcom and others. He re-started the company as a billing company...and his stake in Portal Software is into the billions of dollars, modulo the recent fall in prices of stocks. PRSF is the symbol.) Usenet and mailing lists were usable by the cognoscenti from the mid-80s up to the "modern age." Using gopher and Archie and anonymous ftp was for the cognoscenti only, though. Not much fun for ordinary folks. This obviously all changed around 1994, with Mosaic/Netscape. "Point and click" cleared the way. The illusion of "going to" a site (URLs) did the trick. Faster computers weren't important, in my view. Better screens were only slightly important. Modem speeds were more important. Ironically, I was using a 28.8K modem by around 1992. A big improvement over my 9600 modem. I say "ironically" because 28.8K is what I am now connecting at! Though I have a 56K modem, I cannot reliably connect at much better than 28.8, sometimes 33.3. (I live in a rural area. Can't get a cable modem because I don't have, or want, cable. Can't get DSL because I'm too far from the CO. This may change in a year or so. Don't want to spend $700/mo for a Tachyon rig. Satellite systems may be coming (Gideon, DirecTV), but are not here yet.) Friends of mine have DSL, cable modems, even their own T1s. Is there output any higher than mine? Mostly they just get pages loading in an instant, instead of the seconds or so it takes me to load a page. For actual reading of what's on a page, they have no speed advantages. 28.8 is still faster than people can read, typically. This is where I've been, mostly happily, for several years. My output on mailing lists and to newsgroups has not been insignificant. And I happily use Google, Deja, IMDB, and a hundred other sites. I even send and receive images. About all I cannot plausibly do is download movies, or hundreds of Napster songs, or host Web pages locally. No skin off my nose. The point: I get along fine at 28.8. The modern Web *experience* is what has changed dramatically, not modem speeds and screen resolutions. The very growth of the Web is what fed it. Prior to browsers and URLs, the Net just wasn't as interesting, and it was limited to the aforementioned cognoscenti. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: 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: 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.
"Cypherpunks is archived?"
At 1:33 PM -0700 10/17/00, Ray Dillinger wrote: >On Tue, 17 Oct 2000, John Galt wrote: > >>Cypherpunks is archived? Isn't that against what most cypherpunks stand >>for? I know it sets up a "style fingerprint" attack against anonymity... > >Do you imagine for an instant that a list like this could go out, >be available to anonymous people, and *NOT* be archived? I guarantee >various interested parties including Law Enforcement Agencies are >archiving it, and would be whether or not anyone else did and whether >or not any public archives were available. In fact, I'm betting that >their archives are more complete than the ones on the web, and I wish >we could restore some stuff from those records that's gotten lost from >the web archives. In particular, I designed a digital-cash protocol >once and discussed it on this list, and it's not in the web archives. >I'd like to have that back, it would save me some design work when I >go to implement it. > >We can't stop anybody who gets cypherpunks from archiving it. We >can't stop anybody from getting cypherpunks. QED, there *are* >archives. Some of them might as well be public. Occasionally >they are useful, or contain worthwhile URL's. Not only this, but it was a backburner project for several years to take the toad archives and convert them to a CD-ROM for distribution. So much for "against what most cypherpunks stand for." Cypherpunks don't believe that security comes through obscurity. Those who wish to protect their identities should take positive measures to do so. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: 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: A helpful ruling on "anonymity"
At 10:24 AM -0700 10/17/00, Ray Dillinger wrote: > >Basically, whether it's math or crypto, there are some ideas that >people just aren't going to "get" because they always lump unfamiliar >things together if those things violate the same assumption. > >In math, they used to look at me blankly when I explained that there >was more than one kind of infinity -- Or about transfinite numbers >that *weren't* an infinity -- because they only know finite mathematics. >Anything outside that realm is, well, infinity, and one infinity, >as far as the sheeple are concerned, is as good as another. > >Likewise, people who only understand speech and business mediated >by absolute identities are going to have trouble with the "subtle" >difference between anonymity and pseudonymity. It's a model >where you are dealing with someone but don't know who they are, >and as far as the sheeple are concerned, one not-knowing is as >good as another. It violates the same assumption, therefore in >popular view, it must be the same thing. > Very well said. This is indeed what's happening. More reason not to trust the laws of man. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
RE: Re: why should it be trusted?
At 10:22 AM -0700 10/17/00, Kerry L. Bonin wrote: >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. Your main claim was that ciphers are crackable by the NSA (pace your various comments about "near realtime," "cracking farms," ASICs and silicon-on-sapphire, and your .mil/spook buddies who have confidentially told you so). Are you retracting this claim now? --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?
ltime? (It may be, for a few very, very, very high priority messages...but I doubt even this. The MIPS-years are enormous, and the peak compute capacity is unlikely to be available to handle a message in seconds to minutes, which is what I would call "near realtime.") >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. This is a more debatable point. I think there's ample evidence that the non-NSA expertise in cutting-edge ciphers has exceeded the NSA expertise for the past decade or so. For every Brian Snow the NSA has, the universities have their share of Shafi Goldwassers and Adi Shamirs and Neal Koblitzs and David Wagners. The days when NSA was the main source of funding for math guys like Berlekamp and number theorists and algebraists are over. Hundreds of universities, dozens of crypto companies, massive competition. And for things like factoring, it is _unlikely_ that some GS-14 at the Fort has proved that P = NP or has proved that factoring is not hard. You may claim that this is "just an assumption" and that your spook buddies have told you "off the record" that they can factor 700-digit numbers in "near realtime." Whatever. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: why should it be trusted?
quot; 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. Whatever. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: why should it be trusted?
At 8:50 PM -0700 10/16/00, Nathan Saper wrote:
>
>On Mon, Oct 16, 2000 at 08:12:53PM -0700, Tim May wrote:
>
> >
>> What is the basis for this claim about the NSA having such expertise
>> and technology? Paranoia, ESP, cluelessness, or actual knowledge?
>>
>
>Speculation, nothing more. Notice the "IMHO" above. I'm not claiming
>to be stating facts.
I asked you to provide some _basis_ for your claim, not to quibble
about "not claiming to be stating facts."
>
>Most crypto algorithms are mathematically sound. I'm not worried
>about the NSA finding some miraculous way to factor large numbers.
>I'm worried about the NSA discovering security bugs in crypto tools.
Recall that your precise words were:
"IMHO, the NSA has enough expertise and technology to crack just about
any cipher out there."
This is a claim about _ciphers_, a claim often made by the clueless.
("Any cipher can be broken...," "The NSA has more than enough
computer power...," are the most common variants.)
You are a twit.
--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.
A helpful ruling on "anonymity"
This is a helpful ruling. No kidding. No spoof. --fair use excerpt begins-0- Monday October 16 4:29 PM ET Anonymous Net Posting Not Protected By CATHERINE WILSON, AP Business Writer MIAMI (AP) - In a ruling that challenges online anonymity, a Florida appeals court declared Monday that Internet service providers must divulge the identities of people who post defamatory messages on the Internet. Critics of the ruling say it could have a chilling effect on free expression in Internet chat rooms. Lauren Gelman, public policy director with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is concerned that other courts could follow the lead of the 3rd District Court of Appeals in approving subpoenas. ``This kind of speech happens all the time in all kinds of chat rooms,'' Gelman said. ``We don't want to see these subpoenas become regularly used to cause people to self-censor themselves.'' ``The court had the potential to set an important precedent about the right to speak anonymously on the Internet,'' Lidsky said. ``The courts are eventually going to have to come to grips with this issue and decide how broad free speech rights are in cyberspace.'' --end excerpt-- Lidsky doesn't get it. There is no "right to speak anonymously on the Internet" (or anywhere else). If Alice observes Bob make a comment, and Alice chooses to speak about her observations, or is required by a court to speak about her observations, Bob cannot assert some "right to anonymity." Now, had the court said that all words must be traceable, must be signed, and so on, then this would be a different kettle of fish. But they didn't. The court just said, in this case, that the usual process of discovery and production of evidence is not trumped by some claim of a "right to anonymity." No surprises there. This is helpful because it pushed anonymity back into the technological arena, where it belongs. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Ralph Nader sends privacy survey to Bush and Gore campaigns
At 10:44 PM -0700 10/10/00, Ray Dillinger wrote: >On Tue, 10 Oct 2000, petro wrote: > >> I get the same impression--They seem like National (as >>opposed to International) Socialists. > > >Ah. I see that, in accordance with ancient usenet and >mailing-list tradition, the discussion is now over. > > Bear May's Corollary to Godwin's Law: At least 97% of all invocations of Godwin's Law are done so to squelch debate. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: request for info about DU
At 6:27 PM +0100 10/10/00, Hansen Linn wrote: >I am a journalist student who need some basic info about Depleted Uranium. >Why and how has it depleted Do u have any usefull links were I can find >this info?? > There will be vast numbers of Web pages available. Use search engines. I worked a lot with depleted uranium in a past career. It's natural uranium from which the U-235 isotope has been removed, leaving the U-238 isotope. Inasmuch as U-238 is the bulk of naturally occurring uranium, DU is not very different from ordinary uranium as mined and processed into the metallic form. Though mildly radioactive (half-life of billions of years...4.5 billion, IIRC), its very high density makes it ideal for sailboat keels, cores of anti-tank and anti-ship shells, etc. (When used in a weapon, the DU adds to the penetration, and also ignites and burns...this has nothing whatsoever to do with its radioactivity, though.) Again, consult online sources, or encyclopedias. And if you asked on the Cypherpunks list because you thought it would be cute to implicate us in nuclear weapons chatter, get a clue. If not, it was still the wrong place to ask such a question. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Ralph Nader sends privacy survey to Bush and Gore campaigns
At 1:22 PM -0400 10/10/00, Declan McCullagh wrote: >I think communism has too many negative connotations to be used >nowadays... So communitarian is a new word for the old philosophy. >Kinda like progressive as a replacement for statist or whatnot. > >-Declan Why give them a term which, at least to some, sounds noble? Communitarian, indeed! I favor the more descriptive term: simp-wimps. As for Nader and the Green Party, fuck 'em. There's nothing even remotely tolerable about them. The Green Party, for example, calls for a 100% income tax on all income above some level. I expect most of them need to be liquidated in the purge. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
