Re: Manhattan Mid-Afternoon

[Roy M. Silvernail]

On 12 Sep 2001, at 16:32, Declan McCullagh wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 12, 2001 at 02:59:57PM -0400, Trei, Peter wrote:

> > This morning the local media here in Massachusetts were reporting
> > that a bag for the flight which fortuitously failed to get on the
> > plane was found to contain a Koran, "Islamic materials", and a
> > videotape on flying commercial jets. Clearly, someone who was
> > already a commercial pilot would not have needed the latter item.
> 
> Maybe I'm being a little suspicious, but why in the world would a
> terrorist who doesn't want to be caught and doesn't need the videotape
> (can't watch it on the plane, realistically, I presume) any more take
> it on the plane with him?

I was wondering in a similar vein.  There are also the reports of the 
rented car found to contain Arabic-language flight training manuals, 
and the hotel room in Boston rented by persons sharing the names 
of suspect passengers on the hijacked flights.  NewsMax carries a 
story 
(http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/9/12/80845.shtml)
 that 5 suspects have been identified.

This is too easy.

The overt sophistication of this attack was such that I have a hard 
time believing the perps would leave so many obvious clues behind 
without intending to.  And if they intended to leave clues, the clues 
are almost certainly red herrings.

Interesting times, indeed.

> 
> -Declan


--
Roy M. Silvernail
Proprietor, scytale.com
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

FBI going to Internet for clues

[Eric Murray]

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2001/09/12/financial1728EDT0175.DTL

"The FBI is serving search warrants to
major Internet service providers in order
to get information about an e-mail
address believed to be connected to
Tuesday's terrorist attacks. 

[..]

"They said they're going to all the ISPs,"
the executive said. 

Re: Bombings, Surveillance, and Free Societies

[casey . iverson]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-

At 02:22 PM 9/12/01 , Tim May wrote:

>Personally, while I feel sorry for the dead in Israel, I think anyone who
>moves to a small desert state surrounded on all sides by Arabs who want
>their land back is asking for trouble.

Tim May feels as sorry for the dead in Israel as Arafat and the Taliban feel for the 
dead in NYC and DC.

Sorry Tim. Every one in Washington was not killed, but maybe next time.
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Version: Hush 2.0

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SPOT infrared satellite image of Manhattan

[Stewart, William C (Bill), BMSLS]

Shows New York harbor, big plume of smoke and two visible fires.

-Original Message-
From: David Farber [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2001 5:00 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: IP: SPOT infrared satellite image of Manhattan

>SPOT infrared satellite image of Manhattan, acquired on September 11 at 
>11:55 AM ET. Image may be freely reproduced with "CNES/SPOT Image 2001" 
>copyright attribution:

> http://www.spot.com/home/news/NYC-091101.jpg



For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/

Re: Ben-Laden Demolition

[Dynamite Bob]

> (the collapsing towers reminded me of Independence Day).

Reminded me of Sideshow Bob[1]... buildings sprouting dreadlocks..


Didn't have any Einsturzende Neubaten playing that early in the AM,
though


[1] of _The Simpsons_

terrorism

[Tim May]

[Tim's note: This is from John McCarthy, Professor of Computer Science
(or AI, or similar) at Stanford. Prof. McCarthy was the originator of
the term "artificial intelligence," invented the language LISP, and has
been a creative thinker for many decades. I have always admired his
no-nonsense approach to problems. I ran across this article in
rec.arts.books.]


> Path: 
>sjcpnn01.usenetserver.com!e420r-sjo4.usenetserver.com!sjcppf01.usenetserver.com!usenetserver.com!newsfeeder.randori.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!nntp.stanford.edu!not-for-mail
> From: John McCarthy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
> Subject: terrorism
> Date: 12 Sep 2001 09:56:32 -0700
> Lines: 38
> Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> NNTP-Posting-Host: steam.stanford.edu
> X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.5/XEmacs 20.4 - "Emerald"
> Xref: e420r-sjo4.usenetserver.com rec.arts.books:98083
> 
> 1. The media and the politicians have made this attack a "national
> emergency" as well as an act of war.  It is an act of war but an
> emergency only in New York and Washington.  If we regard ourselves as
> at war with the terrorists, we should minimize the disruption their
> actions cause rather than exaggerate it and increase it.  Some
> universities in California and most of the public schools closed
> because of the alleged emergency.  I'm pleased that Stanford
> University stayed open.
> 
> 2. It has been the policy of the airlines and the FAA that flight crew
> should obey hijackers on the grounds that the policy saves lives.  Up
> to now it has saved lives, but the number of lives lost today far
> outweighs the number saved in toto by the past policy.  One of the
> cell phone calls recounted that the hijackers herded the crew and
> passengers to the back of the plane.  Unless there is some guarantee
> that this kind of hijacking won't happen again, it will be safer to
> arm the crew to fight it out with hijackers, both for the safety of
> passengers and for the safety of possible targets.  I believe this is
> the Israeli policy, and there has been exactly one hijacking of an
> Israeli plane, and that was the very first hijacking of all.
> 
> 3. I suppose the crew of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania had
> heard about the WTC crashes and decided to fight it out rather than
> let the hijackers crash the plane into a public building, but very
> likely they weren't adequately equipped and trained for this.
> 
> 4. Feminist note: The flight crew is often just two men, sometimes
> including a woman.  The cabin crew is much larger.  If hijackers are
> to be fought, the cabin crew, mostly female, should be prepared to mob
> them and inspire passengers to help.
> 
> 5. Putting an armed plain clothes security guard on each flight would
> also work.  It just adds one person to the crew.
> 
> -- 
> John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
> http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
> He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

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SPOT infrared satellite image of Manhattan

[Stewart, William C (Bill), BMSLS]

Shows New York harbor, big plume of smoke and two visible fires.

-Original Message-
From: David Farber [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2001 5:00 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: IP: SPOT infrared satellite image of Manhattan

>SPOT infrared satellite image of Manhattan, acquired on September 11 at 
>11:55 AM ET. Image may be freely reproduced with "CNES/SPOT Image 2001" 
>copyright attribution:

> http://www.spot.com/home/news/NYC-091101.jpg



For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/

The tragedy in NYC (fwd)

[Jim Choate]

-- Forwarded message --
Date: 12 Sep 2001 19:11:23 -0400
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: The tragedy in NYC


[I sent this originally yesterday, but the, er, problems our mail
server in downtown New York suffered for a while caused some
delay. Another copy was published on Dave Farber's interesting
people. Several people wrote me afterwards vilifying me. Ah well.

The list is now running on a new machine in Virginia, which
should be safe even as more buildings collapse and burn.  --Perry]

In the wake of the tragedy in NYC today, I was asked by someone if I
didn't now agree that crypto was a munition. At the time, I thought
that a friend of mine was likely dead. (I've since learned he escaped
in time.)

My answer then, when I thought I'd lost a friend, was the same as my
answer now and the answer I've always had.

Cryptography must remain freely available to all.

In coming months, politicians will flail about looking for freedoms to
eliminate to "curb the terrorist threat". They will see an opportunity
to grandstand and enhance their careers, an opportunity to show they
are "tough on terrorists".

We must remember throughout that you cannot preserve freedom by
eliminating it. The problem is not a lack of laws banning things.

I know the pressure on everyone in Washington will be to "do
something". Speaking as a New Yorker who dearly loves this city, who
has felt deep shock throughout most of the day, watching the smoke
still rising from the fires to the south of me, listening to the
ambulances and police cars continuing to wail about me, let me say
this: 

   I do not want more laws passed in the name of defending my home.

   I do not want more freedoms eliminated to "preserve freedom".

   I do not want to trade my freedom for safety. Franklin has said far
   more eloquently than me why that is worthless.

If you must do something, send out more investigators to find those
responsible for this and bring them to justice. Pass no new laws. Take
away no freedoms. Do not destroy the reason I live here to give me
"safety". I'd rather die in a terrorist attack.

-- 
Perry E. Metzger[EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
"Ask not what your country can force other people to do for you..."




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An Open Letter on Privacy and Anonymity

[Eric Hughes]

2001 September 12
An Open Letter on Privacy and Anonymity


Fellow Citizens of the United States of America:

I am moved to write as a founder of a movement that, far beyond my own 
efforts, has eloquently expressed an ideal, the ideal of privacy in 
society.  Privacy is not uniquely American, yet it is at the core of the 
American ideal, at the core of free speech that enables human connection, 
at the core of free association that builds society up from a savage state, 
at the core of liberty.  I helped to start cypherpunks, a movement for 
privacy in the digital world.  Cypherpunks is a diverse movement with no 
explicit doctrine, yet with a deep shared desire for human liberty.

Let none who call me friend say that the events of September 11 are 
anything other than a dark day upon humanity.  In the midst of the 
violence, I see a thirst for the taste of the blood of vengeance in the 
mouths of many of my fellow citizens.  I see that destruction will 
ineluctably ride upon the opponents of the country of these my fellow 
citizens.  So be it.  I do not seek here to forestall or to avoid the 
violence directed toward the perpetrators of these deeds.

I write as a citizen of the United States that our country may avoid a 
self-inflicted wound against liberty.  The terrorists have struck a blow 
against liberty, it is said.  The terrorists will strike again, it is 
said.  I say to all, let us not strike the second blow against 
ourselves.  Today we are seeking an enemy unknown, an enemy who is hiding, 
as well they ought to.  The thirst that drives our country forward now 
cannot be slaked without the apprehension of those responsible, and we have 
yet to identify or find them.  We now have a great temptation before us, to 
lash out at those amongst ourselves who may be thought to have given succor 
to our enemies, at those amongst ourselves who may be thought to still 
provide them solace and deception, and at those amongst ourselves whom some 
dislike for unrelated reasons.

I wish to repeat again the words of Governor Davis of California, who spoke 
yesterday that "we are all Americans."  We are all Americans, and we should 
not attack ourselves.  We are all Americans, and we should not fight each 
other in the streets.  We are all Americans, and we should not turn our law 
enforcement apparatus and our national security infrastructure against the 
very liberties that we all hold dear.  The goal of these terrorists is to 
restrict freedoms in America, to steal its essence and to weaken it.  I 
shall pray we do not cooperate with this their goal in a hot-headed rush to 
immediate results.  Let the anger of this country be cold and calmly 
directed, that the accompaniment of wrath be precision.

The terrorists are cowards, it is said.  Shall America be a coward to 
itself?  We have an excess of strength to expend upon our opponents, be 
they external or internal.  We will find that there are internal champions 
of liberty that have without conspiracy or knowledge furthered the plans of 
our opponents, who have taken advantage of the liberties that America 
offers all who enter her shores.  Many of these champions I know 
personally, because cypherpunks have enabled liberty on-line to all takers, 
without discrimination and without distinction.  Let the prevailing wrath 
be directed not against those to promote liberty, but those who consciously 
seek to destroy it.

We need not curtail our liberty in order to save it.  The message is 
seductive that we may more effectively fight for liberty if we limit our 
freedoms for a time whose end has yet to be announced.  Yet this is not the 
message of America, but of several of its vanquished enemies.  For liberty 
is not fair-weather clothing that may only be worn when the weather is 
good.  Liberty is rather the jewel in the locket, the most prized 
possession short of family and life itself.  We diminish ourselves if we 
rationalize our freedom away in an evanescent fog of rhetoric about 
efficiency.  Liberty is not efficient; it is expensive and tortuous, and as 
an American people we desire it before most everything else.

As we enter a new century, let us demonstrate the true strength of an open 
society -- that it can withstand the threat of demagoguery even as it 
remains a powerful actor against an external threat.  This is the ideal 
that our strength may manifest, that a democracy may express its power as a 
democracy itself, and not as a police state masquerading as one.

I stand with the Federal Congress and sing "America, my home, sweet 
home."  For I live upon this land and soil, with other people who have set 
their lives along the course of freedom.  I pray that we may all pass 
through this dark time with the dignity of our own ideals intact, that we 
may pass through to the other side with renewed vigor to pursue the cause 
of freedom over all the earth.  My heart grieves with those who have lost, 
yet it also rejoices that we might yet underg

Basking in the Glow of Terror

[Frog2]

(Some commentary on various silliness to hit the list in the wake of 
the terrorists attacks on the 11th).

Assertion:  "If only all airline passengers could be armed this never 
would have happened."

This is bunk.

All it takes is an AD to kill 300+ people on a airplane at 35,000 feet. 
 I've been to several concealed permit classes.  Based on the people I 
have encountered passing those courses, I think I'll pass on that idea. 
 However, the Sky Marshall program was canceled long ago and the events 
of September 11th make me wonder why.  I suspect that would have been 
far more effective, and far less dangerous, than permitting all airline 
passengers to carry loaded firearms aboard commercial airline flights.  
Americans are simply not responsible enough to carry firearms on 
Commercial flights.  Hell, I don't think any Swiss or Germans are 
either now that I consider it.  That's just folly and I am somewhat 
surprised to hear usually sage list members make this case and even 
blame anti-gun legislators of note for the incident.  Even if 90% of 
people are totally responsible that puts 30 irresponsible people on a 
full flight.  If 10% of those people carry, (3 people or 1% of the 
total) that's too much.  More than that, it's crazy.  Any discharge in 
a plane is a big deal.  Sky Marshalls used special low penetration low 
velocity ammo and are otherwise trained to minimize collateral damage 
if they discharge firearms in an aircraft.  That's far too much to 
expect from most American gun owners.  Face fact.

Assertion: "This wasn't the product of a expensive, long term 
coordinated effort."  "This attack could have been pulled off by a 
small group of perhaps 15 people for almost no money."  "It could have 
been a tiny cadre of eight or twelve people with no more money than to 
buy some plane tickets.  There is no reason a group could not organize 
such a project with a week's notice once you know airport security is 
going to let you pass with pocket knifes and cardboard box cutters."  
"We will find these terrorists were mostly lucky, not skilled."

Nonsense.

It almost certain that there were 8 direct field operatives and 12 
indirect field operatives involved in the attack (at least two for each 
plane: one to fly and one to hold the passengers at bay) plus support 
personnel.  It's possible that only 4 of these were prepared to die 
(and that the non-pilot hijacker didn't know that the hijacking would 
end up as a suicide attack).  Given that CNN is reporting a fragment 
rumor that the passengers might have overheard the terrorist's 
conversation which included a discussion of the Capital as a target it 
sounds like both terrorists (assuming they didn't also have a sleeper 
or two among the passangers just watching, which is a typical hijacking 
strategy) on that flight were prepared to die.  The chances of finding 
8 (or even 4) multi-engine licensed (or at least competent) Muslim (as 
seems to be the case) or other religious zealots willing to commit 
suicide for a cause- and maintaining that intention for many many 
months (more on this below)- is probably _vanishingly_ small.  These 
people must have a better than even chance of living in the United 
States for a long period and blending in for a long period.  Such 
persons would have to be _created_, rather than found and recruited.

In fact, it seems that this is the case since the FBI has (as of this 
writing) taken the records of individuals who attended months of flight 
school in Florida (At "Flight Safety International").  That's about 
$20,000 in flight training over the course of several months.  Two of 
the current suspects already had single engine licenses and were paying 
$1400.00 a month since June 10th, 2000 for rent in Florida.  $20,000 in 
lease payments per house for two houses over 15 months.  Apparently 
initial multi-engine training was followed up with jet training 
elsewhere- more costs there, perhaps another $20,000 for that pair.  
That means you have to house these people and their families (since 
apparently families were present) under a reliable and passable cover 
in the United States during that period.  You have to feed them, give 
them whatever other supplies required to get them to blend in.  This is 
small town Florida.  People there are nosey and spend a lot of time in 
their neighbor's busines.  They watch each other's houses.  They have 
nothing better to do.  Therefore you have to provide for their 
security, their camouflage.  They have to blend in well.  Appear to be 
middle class.  Harmless.  Have a dog.  Furniture.  Kids in school.  
They have to be able to withstand any check from a moving vehicle 
violation, pass flight certification, medical checks, insurance 
payments, credit checks by banks, realtors, credit card companies, 
avoid any kind of altercation that might attract police scrutiny and 
have some kind of plausible visa in the United States.  That's not 
cheap.  Not at all.  I've outline

Re: Basking in the Glow of Terror

[Roy M. Silvernail]

On 12 Sep 2001, at 23:30, Frog2 wrote:

> Assertion:  "The overt sophistication of this attack was such that I
> have a hard time believing the perps would leave so many obvious clues
> behind without intending to."
> 
> These are suicide attacks.  Why do they care what clues they leave?

Interesting that a friend at work asked the very same question 
when I made that assertion.  My answer:  They don't, but their 
handlers certainly do.

Your piece eloquently supports my opinion that this was a large-
scale, well-planned operation.  It was not planned solely by the 
perps who carried out the missions.  Their handlers will not want to 
be easily identified, lest they draw nuclear fire.  Therefore, all the 
easily discovered clues will doubtless be diversionary.
--
Roy M. Silvernail
Proprietor, scytale.com
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

"Ending States That Support Terrorism"

[Eric Cordian]

Anyone have the list of countries that Bush is planning on scheduling for
termination?

I would imagine Afganistan and Iraq are the first two.  Will he toss in
Syria, Sudan, and Libya as well?

It looks like the game that is being played here, is that all countries
are being given an opportunity to pledge unconditional support and
cooperation for Bush's "War" against those rendering aid to terrorism, now
declared to be the primary focus of his administration, and whoever
declines will constitute the enemy.
 
Pakistan has even climbed aboard, in the hopes that we won't drop any
bombs on them on our way to Afganistan.  Of course, they must prove their
loyalty by cutting off Afganistan's oil and gas, and permitting us to base
our troops there.

Isn't playing these sorts of games with Saudi Arabia, the location of
Islam's most sacred sites, the reason Osama bin Laden is mad at the US to
begin with?

Is this how Hitler started?

While all of this is transpiring, a smirking Ariel Sharon, the war
criminal elected by acclaimation, will be taking more of the Palestinians'
land.

So when's the Congress going to outlaw encryption?  I assume we'll all be
expected to make such small sacrifices for the larger good. 

We're all supposed to fly American flags for the next 30 days to show our
support for all of this.  I wonder if they'll be taking names.

-- 
Eric Michael Cordian 0+
O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division
"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"

Re: "Ending States That Support Terrorism"

[Declan McCullagh]

On Thu, Sep 13, 2001 at 02:36:14PM -0700, Eric Cordian wrote:
> So when's the Congress going to outlaw encryption?  I assume we'll all be
> expected to make such small sacrifices for the larger good. 

I assume you wrote this before you saw my Wired article on the topic.

-Declan

Eric Hughes' email

[Dr. Evil]

Hi, does anyone have a copy of the email Eric Hughes sent out?  I
somehow didn't get it and I can't find it in the archive.

Thanks!

RE: Congress mulls crypto restrictions in response to attacks

[Aimee Farr]

Amateur radio was the first casualty after Pearl Harbor. Some criticize the
action now, of course.

~Aimee

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
> Behalf Of Declan McCullagh
> Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2001 3:59 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Congress mulls crypto restrictions in response to attacks
>
>
> http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46816,00.html
>
> Congress Mulls Stiff Crypto Laws
> By Declan McCullagh ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
> 1:45 p.m. Sep. 13, 2001 PDT
>
> WASHINGTON -- The encryption wars have begun.
>
> For nearly a decade, privacy mavens have been worrying that a
> terrorist attack could prompt Congress to ban
> communications-scrambling products that frustrate both police wiretaps
> and U.S. intelligence agencies.
>
> Tuesday's catastrophe, which shed more blood on American soil than any
> event since the Civil War, appears to have started that process.
>
> Some politicians and defense hawks are warning that extremists such as
> Osama bin Laden, who U.S. officials say is a crypto-aficionado and the
> top suspect in Tuesday's attacks, enjoy unfettered access to
> privacy-protecting software and hardware that render their
> communications unintelligible to eavesdroppers.
>
> In a floor speech on Thursday, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire)
> called for a global prohibition on encryption products without
> backdoors for government surveillance.
>
> "This is something that we need international cooperation on and we
> need to have movement on in order to get the information that allows
> us to anticipate and prevent what occurred in New York and in
> Washington," Gregg said, according to a copy of his remarks that an
> aide provided.
>
> President Clinton appointed an ambassador-rank official, David Aaron,
> to try this approach, but eventually the administration abandoned the
> project.
>
> Gregg said encryption makers "have as much at risk as we have at risk
> as a nation, and they should understand that as a matter of
> citizenship, they have an obligation" to include decryption methods
> for government agents. Gregg, who previously headed the appropriations
> committee overseeing the Justice Department, said that such access
> would only take place with "court oversight."
>
> [...]
>
> Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, a hawkish think tank
> that has won accolades from all recent Republican presidents, says
> that this week's terrorist attacks demonstrate the government must be
> able to penetrate communications it intercepts.
>
> "I'm certainly of the view that we need to let the U.S. government
> have access to encrypted material under appropriate circumstances and
> regulations," says Gaffney, an assistant secretary of defense under
> President Reagan.
>
> [...]
>
>
>
> -
> POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list
> You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.
> Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
> To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
> This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
> -

Re: CNN Using 1991 Footage of Celebrating Palestinians?

[Declan McCullagh]

I agree with Liz. This violates journalistic principles (old footage
can be used but must be labeled "file footage" or similar) and would
expose CNN to withering criticism from its competitors and other
journalists.

Worth ignoring.

-Declan


On Thu, Sep 13, 2001 at 01:46:16PM -0700, lizard wrote:
> Matthew Gaylor wrote:
> > 
> > CNN Using 1991 Footage of Celebrating Palestinians
> > 
> > Can anyone verify this?
> > 
> > http://www.indymedia.org.il/imc/israel/webcast/display.php3?article_id=6946
> > 
> Reading through the following comments, it seems unlikely. Possible, but
> unlikely. The evidence, at this point, consists of an obviously anti-US
> poster referring to an unnamed Professor with an unseen tape. That's
> pretty low on the rely-o-meter.
> 
> I won't say it's impossible, but I want a better source.

New flight rules

[-=Drake=-]

That won't work you dolt!
You are forgetting about string, cord, and belts.  No belts!
And no long fingernails!

 They should just handcuff us to our seats. And let us up one at a time to
go potty.

Yeah, that's it.


Dynamite Bob wrote:

> Airlines would only be allowed to provide passengers with plastic knives
> and butter knives to eat their meals, an FAA spokesman said.
> http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010912/1/1fwyc.html
>
> Also: only crayons, no pens or pencils.  All PDAs, with their sharp
> styli
> and brittle glass displays, will be replaced with Etch-a-Sketch toys.
>
> Also all fingernails must be trimmed to 2mm past the fingerpad, this
> must be done
> before passing through security as nailclippers with nailfiles will not
> be permitted on board,
> either.
>
> Good thing none of the Martyr Airlines dudes shorted out their laptop
> batteries to make a diversion...
>
> ..
>
> Jeezus guys, get a clue.  You can't pull the same stunt twice, whether
> its a 'normal' hijacking
> which turns out to be different (so much for passenger compliance..), or
> the latest
> social-engineering virus trick.  The rubes *do* learn.
>
> The next time, its a bottle of Japanese Subway Perfume.
>
> Alas, a lot less eye candy with that.

A Call for a Chorus of Voices

[Eric Hughes]

2001 September 13
A Call for a Chorus of Voices

To All Who Would Defend Liberty and Freedom:

Yesterday I wrote an open letter to all my fellow citizens.  Today I write 
to all those who would defend liberty, on-line and everywhere else, from 
the looming threat of demagoguery that now hangs over us all.  This morning 
I arose from my sleep with two realizations.  First, that I would have 
changed the title of my letter had I thought about it.  This has been 
pointed out by others.  Second, that yesterday was the ninth anniversary of 
the first cypherpunks meeting; I had not realized this in the moment.

When I began to write yesterday's letter, I had in mind to write a 
different letter than the one that thence I wrote.  I had first intended a 
message to you my comrades, but in the moment I started typing I began to 
cry, because I had been struck as if by an external blow with the 
realization of whom I wanted to address.  It was difficult for me to touch 
the well of my sincerity, because I have been and yet remain deeply cynical 
about my country, my government, and the particularly resilient propaganda 
of our media in the image of democracy.  I had written only the title 
before I was overcome.

For now the next phase of the work has commenced for which cypherpunks was 
preparation.  The goal to affix into our society a bodiless ability to hide 
has greatly been achieved, yet the nascent robustness of these systems is 
as yet fragile.  Our institutions do not yet breathe the ethos of 
individual liberty without supplemental air.  The threat is not unique, 
however, and the task at hand is wider than our own concerns.  As personal 
ability is bound up in technology, the technologies of which my friends and 
I have been so fond are but a section a larger movement, the movement to a 
democracy more about the "demos" than the "kratein", more about the people 
than the ruling.

I shall not enumerate these trends into which cypherpunks so neatly 
fits.  We are at a juncture in the road of our culture, whether to pursue 
the path of safety by limiting the individual and ignoring their desires or 
to pursue the path of safety by strengthening the individual and working 
out a new commons of desire.  We cannot choose both; they are mutually 
hostile to each other in spirit and in practice.  Our response to this 
week's terrorism will mark the proclivities of our future course.

I have been challenged to write a narrow essay on privacy particularly.  I 
regret to say that I cannot.  My heart is elsewhere, and I have moved from 
privacy alone as a tool for my aspirations.  I could not be as eloquent 
about privacy in isolation, because in truth I see no longer the isolation 
in which I was previously so comfortable.

And thus I call for a chorus of voices to ring out and to proclaim the 
welter of specific consequences of walking down the path of individual 
liberty.  My heart has been full in reading the spontaneous upwelling of 
sentiment from Perry Metzger, Sean Hastings, Matt Blaze, and Blanc 
Weber.  Add to these your own voice, your own words, your own concerns.  I 
seek the vision of a harmonious chorus without director, a single message 
rising in many throats, the motive wheel without a center.

Speak about whatever you will, but speak true and speak from the 
heart.  There are enough whose hearts are privacy and anonymity that I have 
nothing but faith that chorus shall contain enough of those voices.  My 
heart is with you all, even though I shall not lead the charge.  To touch 
one's own true voice may need the passage through ordeal, yet persevere, 
for everyone can find it.

May peace arise from you all, and may the power of your souls become 
manifest in your deeds.

Eric Hughes



[Please feel free to post this at will.]

Re: Congress mulls crypto restrictions in response to attacks

[Tim May]

On Thursday, September 13, 2001, at 01:58 PM, Declan McCullagh wrote:

> http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46816,00.html
>
>Congress Mulls Stiff Crypto Laws
>By Declan McCullagh ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
>1:45 p.m. Sep. 13, 2001 PDT
>
>WASHINGTON -- The encryption wars have begun.
>
>For nearly a decade, privacy mavens have been worrying that a
>terrorist attack could prompt Congress to ban
>communications-scrambling products that frustrate both police 
> wiretaps
>and U.S. intelligence agencies.
>
>Tuesday's catastrophe, which shed more blood on American soil than 
> any
>event since the Civil War, appears to have started that process.
>
>Some politicians and defense hawks are warning that extremists such 
> as
>Osama bin Laden, who U.S. officials say is a crypto-aficionado and 
> the
>top suspect in Tuesday's attacks, enjoy unfettered access to
>privacy-protecting software and hardware that render their
>communications unintelligible to eavesdroppers.
>
>In a floor speech on Thursday, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire)
>called for a global prohibition on encryption products without
>backdoors for government surveillance.

This is the main reason it is ESSENTIAL that the "rest of the world" NOT 
(repeat NOT) support the U.S. in their upcoming actions against the 
likely WTC terrorists.

If Russia, China, India, Pakistan, the Arab countries, and of course the 
European nations "sign on," this will truly usher in a New World Order. 
Strong crypto will be banned so quickly our heads will spin (those of us 
not already arrested and dealt with).

I have no idea how to derail this freight train that is beginning to 
gather speed.

Dark times are coming. I'll bet a complete ban on strong, unescrowed 
crypto is passed in all European countries, Russia, China, Japan, and 
the U.S. by, say, December 15th. Congresscriminals are stumbling over 
their feet in their race to repeal big chunks of the Bill of Rights. For 
most countries, with no real Bills of Rights, the statists will use this 
to cement their own power.

Dark times.

--Tim May

RE: Cypherpunks and terrorism

[Sandy Sandfort]

"Nomen Nescio" wrote:

> It is at exactly this time that soul
> searching is most appropriate.  Now is
> when you should ask yourself:  Am I
> doing the right thing?  Am I making the
> world a better place?
>
> You don't have to convince some devil's
> advocate.  Just convince yourself.

"Nomen" assumes facts not in evidence.  Those of us who have been on
Cypherpunks for years--including Greg--have already done that appropriate
"soul searching."  It is because we have come to the conclusion that we are
making the world a better place, that we support strong crypto.  "Nomen's"
moral uncertainty sounds like a personal problem to me.


 S a n d y

RE: Cypherpunks and terrorism

[Nomen Nescio]

Greg Broiles writes:
> I propose that this sort of discussion - about whether or not, in the face 
> of violence and tragedy, some aspect of human freedom and expression can be 
> suitably "justified" to satisfy every self-appointed devil's advocate - is 
> absolutely unproductive and serves only to suck energy and concentration 
> from more interesting projects.

It's astonishing that you should say this.  It is at exactly this time
that soul searching is most appropriate.  Now is when you should ask
yourself:  Am I doing the right thing?  Am I making the world a better
place?

You don't have to convince some devil's advocate.  Just convince yourself.

You're about to begin running a remailer.  Apparently you haven't done
so before.  Well, it should be quite an education.  Keep it up for a
year and you'll be more qualified to judge whether this technology is
good or bad, on balance.  One thing is certain: if you go into it just
because you think it will be an "interesting project", you won't stay
with it for long.

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RE: Cypherpunks and terrorism

[Greg Broiles]

At 12:20 AM 9/14/2001 +0200, Nomen Nescio wrote:

>You're about to begin running a remailer.  Apparently you haven't done
>so before.  Well, it should be quite an education.

Ah, no. Try a Google search for "[EMAIL PROTECTED]", and 
you'll find plenty of references to the remailer I ran in 1994-1995. (I 
don't remember when I started - there's a reasonable chance it was in the 
fall of 1993, but honest remailers don't keep logs . . )

I think remailers are ideally run either by people/organizations with very 
few resources (so they're not attractive litigation targets) or substantial 
resources (so they can defend themselves vigorously & aggressively vs. 
litigation) and right now I find myself somewhere in between those two 
poles. Nevertheless, the events of the past few days have changed the 
risk/benefit ratio such that I believe the risks of inaction on my part are 
worse than the risks of acting.

>   Keep it up for a
>year and you'll be more qualified to judge whether this technology is
>good or bad, on balance.  One thing is certain: if you go into it just
>because you think it will be an "interesting project", you won't stay
>with it for long.

I'm going into it because I think it's important to provide actual and 
symbolic support for freedom and privacy when those values appear to be 
under attack by people like you, who would assume the title of "conscience" 
and "protector" in order to render people helpless, practically or legally.

If you're still hung up on judging whether technology is "good" or "bad", 
you're not ready for this list, nor are you qualified to discuss policy 
beyond deciding what color the balloons and streamers should be at the 
homecoming dance.


--
Greg Broiles
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"We have found and closed the thing you watch us with." -- New Delhi street kids

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[Jim Choate]

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http://a188.g.akamaitech.net/f/188/920/4m/www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21207-2001Sep12.html
-- 

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An assault on liberty?

[Peter Wayner]

I realize that many will use this event as an excuse for many 
political agendas, but I think it's important that we think through 
exactly what happened. It doesn't seem like it was an assault on 
liberty or a misuse of the liberties we have. Most people can't fly 
planes. The learning process is long and the licensing requirements 
are many. Flying a 757 is even more restricted by both cost and 
licensing requirements. It's not a liberty like walking around the 
streets or speaking one's mind.

It doesn't seem to me that this attack had anything to do with 
liberty. It's not like someone abused the right to bear arms by 
shooting someone, it's not like someone abused the right to speak 
freely by libeling someone, it's not like someone abused the right to 
drink alcohol by plowing into a school bus after drinking too much. 
These guys were unauthorized to have knives, they were unauthorized 
to have bombs, they were unauthorized to fly 757s, they were probably 
unauthorized to be in the country. Yet they did all of these despite 
the controls.

The hard lesson is that controls don't always work. Licensing 
requirements, security checkpoints, and armed guards fail. It's sad, 
but there's no physical law like gravity that we can depend upon to 
keep ourselves safe.


If you ask me, the biggest danger is that we'll add more ineffective 
security measures in the hopes of doing something.  And the real 
problem is the controls may never be enough to keep us safe.

-Peter

RE: J. Neil Schulman On I can't take it anymore ....

[Paul E. Robichaux]

>But they are.  On U.S. domestic flights they have merely to 
>present themselves and acceptable credentials (which BTW the
>airline personnel are poorly trained to authenticate) and state 
>in a form that they are traveling for LE purposes. 

That goes for federal LEOs, not local or state.

Re: J. Neil Schulman On I can't take it anymore ....

[Steve Schear]

At 11:15 AM 9/13/2001 -0700, Derek Balling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>At 10:28 PM -0700 9/12/01, Steve Schear wrote:
>>>If local police officers who fly were allowed to carry their guns with
>>>them, warned only to switch to frangible ammunition, this couldn't have
>>>happened.
>>
>>But they are.  On U.S. domestic flights they have merely to present 
>>themselves and acceptable credentials (which BTW the airline personnel 
>>are poorly trained to authenticate) and state in a form that they are 
>>traveling for LE purposes.  There are other formalities that are 
>>followed, but overall they are not restricted from carrying.
>
>But why should it have to be "for law enforcement purposes"? Is the LEO 
>somehow "less capable of handling his firearm properly" because he's not 
>travelling to LGA to pick up a prisoner?

I can't speak to the why since those thoughts are rarely communicated 
outside the FAA.  Perhaps its the Fed LEs themselves who reluctant to go 
through the paperwork unless they are traveling on business.

steve

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Re: Cypherpunk Threat Analysis

[Tim May]

On Thursday, September 13, 2001, at 08:39 AM, Aimee Farr wrote:

> For the sick people in here that like to call for TNA's (target name and
> address) for judicial officials etc.
>
> --
> NLECTC Law Enforcement & Corrections Technology News Summary
> Thursday, September 13, 2001
> --
> "Technological Advances in Assessing Threats to Judicial
> Officials"
> Sheriff (08/01) Vol. 53, No. 4, P. 34; Calhoun, Frederick S.
>
> The majority of sheriff offices throughout the country
> assign personnel to handle threats made to judges according
> to which situations pose the greatest risks. Los Angeles


I wonder why Agent Farr warns about our list "tolerating" bomb 
discussions, and then posts her own provocateur bomb discussions.

I wonder why Agent Farr refers to the "sick people in here" who cite 
names of LEAs and then makes a point to cite LEA persons by _name_.

Agent Farr arrived from _nowhere_ just after the election last year, 
with no previous detectable online interests, on half a dozen of the 
most "controversial" mailing lists and discussion groups. She began 
baiting and provoking, and when that failed, starting her own "Bomb Law 
Reporter" and attempting to entrap discussion group participants in what 
she has claimed are "dangerous" activities.

She has recently claimed that our failure to support Big 
Brother-friendly networks makes us equivalent to the WTC actors.

The witch hunt began a long time ago, but it has taken on new dimensions 
recently. Expect to see the real Agent Farr, who is very probably not 
named "Aimee" in real life, testifying before Congress on his 
"undercover" operations to shut down the Cypherpunks, PGP, and 
Extropians lists.

--Tim May

Re: MARTIAL LAW Cypherpunks and terrorism

[!Dr. Joe Baptista]

On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote:

> At 09:57 PM 9/12/01 -0400, !Dr. Joe Baptista wrote:
> 
> >That's not an answer - thats an interview with little details.
> 
> If you look at the links from that page, you'll see it's actually an 
> extraordinary lengthy interview that details bin Ladin's "demands." Basic 
> searches will turn up far more information; my point was that information 
> is out there and people should not be expect to be fed it.

Well I've looked at it carefully and all I see is links to more
nonsense.  Let me explain this to you and hopefully provide you a well
earned education.

This is a picture of a child - just one out of hundreds that we evacuated
to Canada from Afganistan during the russian occupation of Afganistan.

http://www.pccf.net/bod/jb/misc/MCLEOD07.html

I don't remember his name - like I said we handled hundreds of these
kids.  But this little boy is just one of many who were subjected to the
russian idea of how to win a war.  You may remember Declan that the
russians at the time were losing the war against the afganis and they
resorted to building bombs which looked like toys.

The idea was to drop these bomb-toys in the hope of maiming and injuring
afganis children with the ultimate hope of demoralizing the population
through the victimization of their children.  It did not work - but the
scars are real - and damage was done.

This child was lucky - after years of reconstructive surgery at the Hotel
Deu hospital in Kingston Ontario he was able to walk normally again.

Now I should stress the American Military at the time was instrumental in
assisting us in evacuating these children and by default we saved many
lives.

Osama Bin Ladin and the Fatwa are of no significance to what happened in
america.  They are the symbols of a struggle that has been going on for
many years.  A struggle against oppression and planned genocide in which
the United States has been a significant contributor and
supporter.  i.e. Israel's oppression of the palestinians, i.e. south
africa, i.e. east timor etc. etc. etc.

Arabs are by default very nobel, trustworthy and honourable people.  But
they are not cows.  They will not bow their heads as their civilization is
brutalized and raped.  They will fight back with the vengence that is
the holy jihad.

Kill Osama Bin Ladin and you create another arab saint and many more holy
warriors take his place.  That is the nature of the beast.

The terror we saw in new york and washington this week is the harvest of
many years of seed planting by the US government.  It represents the
response of a people who have been opressed and lied to for years by a
US government which claims to support the virtues of freedom and
democracy yet funds terror on a world wide basis for no better reason then
to make a profit.

Again I say that these men who were responsible for this terror acted as
judge jury and executioners.  And the verdict of this self appointed
inquisition was the terror we saw this week and which will be with us for
many more years.  And I still say to you that the reasons and the question
of why this was done have yet to be provided to us.

regards
joe

-- 
Joe Baptista

http://www.dot-god.com/

The dot.GOD Registry, Limited
The Executive Plaza, Suite 908
150 West 51st Street Tel: 1 (208) 330-4173
Manhattan Island NYC 10019 USA   Fax: 1 (208) 293-9773

Re: Cypherpunks and terrorism

[Nomen Nescio]

Declan McCullagh writes:
> On Wed, Sep 12, 2001 at 06:00:46PM +0200, Nomen Nescio wrote:
> > Some terrorists have exactly this as their goal.  They are hoping
> > to trigger a counter-reaction, an over-reaction, by the authorities.
> > They want to see a crackdown on liberties, a police state.  This will
> > weaken the enemy and demoralize him.  It will increase hostility and
> > make the population less willing to support the government.
>
> This is nonsense. I suspect the bin Laden want the U.S. to stop
> handing Israel billions of dollars a year in aid and weapons. Not
> bombing pharmecutical plants and lifting an embargo that kills
> hundreds of thousands (allegedly) of Iraqi women and children might be
> a nice move too.

It's always amazing to see how stupid the responses are to various
messages.  There seems to be no limit to the ignorance of the cypherpunks.

It is well known that this is a motivation for many terrorists.  If you
will not believe it from an anonymous message, perhaps you will be
convinced by quotes from the two co-founders of the cypherpunks, both
of whom have said exactly the same thing in messages posted today:

Tim May wrote in 1996 and reposted today:

: Revolutionary theory says of course that this increased clampdown is a
: desired effect of terrorist bombings and attacks. Fear and doubt.
: Revolutionary ends rarely happen by slow, incremental movement. Hundreds of
: examples, from the original "bomb-throwing anarchists" to the modern mix of
: terrorist bands. The Red Brigade in Italy sought a fascist crackdown, and
: the "strategy of tension" is common. (And even revolutionists of crypto
: anarchist persuasion often think laws like the CDA are good in the long
: run, by undermining respect for authority and triggering more extreme
: reactions)

Note his comment about how the Communications Decency Act is actually
considered good by revolutionaries of the crypto anarchist persuasion.
Know any of those?  Gee, the anonymous message made exactly the same point
earlier, that someone like Tim May would welcome crackdowns on freedom.

Eric Hughes wrote today (in a beautiful message that deserves to be
widely distributed):

: The goal of these terrorists is to 
: restrict freedoms in America, to steal its essence and to weaken it.  I 
: shall pray we do not cooperate with this their goal in a hot-headed rush to 
: immediate results.

The same point, made each time: that the terrorists seek to weaken America
by causing what Tim May calls an "increased clampdown", what Eric Hughes
describes as "to restrict freedoms in America", and what the anonymous
poster characterized as "a crackdown on liberties".  The difference is
that Tim May welcomes the change; Eric Hughes pleads against it; and
the anonymous poster merely calls upon cypherpunks to recognize that
they have a choice between these contrasting views.

There are two contrasting forces at the heart of the cypherpunk
philosophy, well exemplified by the two co-founders, and their messages
posted today show the difference well.

The dark anger of May versus the bright hope of Hughes.  Make your choice.

Re: An Open Letter on Privacy and Anonymity

[Nomen Nescio]

Eric Hughes wrote:
> 2001 September 12
> An Open Letter on Privacy and Anonymity

It's a well written letter, unquestionably.  But there's a problem.

While the title of the letter refers to privacy and anonymity, these terms
are hardly used in the body.  Privacy is referred to only in the first
paragraph were Eric introduces himself as a founder of the cypherpunks,
a privacy organization.  And anonymity is never mentioned at all!

Any essay which purports to address a topic ought to mention it, don't
you think?  What if he had titled it, an open letter on pedophilia and
child abuse?  Would the arguments in the letter then automatically mean
that we should support those activities?

Mostly the letter contains calls for the preservation of liberty.
Unfortunately, every politician in the United States, while voting for the
most Draconian martial law curfews ever seen, would endorse each paragraph
in Eric's message.  Without some specifics tying these calls for liberty
to concrete policy questions, the letter is not as strong as it should be.

> We need not curtail our liberty in order to save it.  The message is 
> seductive that we may more effectively fight for liberty if we limit our 
> freedoms for a time whose end has yet to be announced.

How broadly do we take this?  What about the elimination of curbside
baggage checkins at airports?  Is this a curtailment of our liberty?
Is it a sign that we have diminished ourselves?  Or is it a reasonable
precaution in the face of terrorist hijackings?

The letter from Sean Hastings suffered from the same vagueness:

>Do not let your natural reactions of fear or anger help ANYONE to
>further their short term political goals, or impose any "temporary"
>measures.

No "temporary" measures?  They shouldn't have banned flights on Tuesday?
Why not, exactly?  Seemed like a wise precaution to most people.
And no furthering of short-term political goals?  The politicians have
been wanting to dip into the social security "lockbox" for months.
Now they can.  Is this wrong?  Isn't it just a matter of changing
priorities which everyone will support?

Why are we seeing such vague generalities from obviously talented writers?

Let's see people go to the heart of the issue.  If you want to argue
for privacy and anonymity, make the case!  The fact that no one will
come out and make an argument for these technologies suggests that it
is because they are afraid that any argument will be too weak to stand.

Eric Hughes, take on this challenge.  Write an essay, not in defense
of liberty, but in defense of privacy and anonymity, as you promised
in your title.  And do it at a time when some of the best leads towards
tracing these attackers are possible exactly because of a lack of privacy
and anonymity.  Tell us why the world would be a better place if it
were impossible to trace these men.  It's not an impossible argument.
But it's not easy, either, like supporting freedom.  Let's see it done,
by someone as talented as you.

Re: Cypherpunk Threat Analysis

[Eugene Leitl]

On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, Tim May wrote:

> "undercover" operations to shut down the Cypherpunks, PGP, and
> Extropians lists.

I dunno about Agent Farr, but the Extropians@ are innocent. Utterly.
Please take that into considerations, Yer Honor.

-- Eugen* Leitl http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204/";>leitl
__
ICBMTO  : N48 10'07'' E011 33'53'' http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204
57F9CFD3: ED90 0433 EB74 E4A9 537F CFF5 86E7 629B 57F9 CFD3

American Muslims being attacked and harassed

[Matthew Gaylor]

Unfortunately I've been getting reports from around the US of 
American Muslims being attacked and harassed.  If you want to stay on 
top of the latest news I recommend that you subscribe to The Muslim 
Student Association News mailing list (MSANEWS).  The list is fairly 
high volume, but does contain most of the news and perspectives from 
the Muslim and Islamic communities worldwide.

To subscribe, send e-mail to:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> with the message
body "subscribe MSANEWS Firstname Lastname".


MSANEWS Home Page:   
Comments to the Editors:   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Submissions for MSANEWS:   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Problems with subscription:   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Regards,  Matt-


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U.S. Held Liable in '90 Kidnap

[Dynamite Bob]

http://latimes.com/news/local/la-73744sep13.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dcalifornia

U.S. Held Liable in '90 Kidnap

Ruling: A court says the government-arranged
abduction of a Mexican
  doctor sought in the murder of a DEA agent broke
international law.

  By HENRY WEINSTEIN, TIMES LEGAL
  AFFAIRS WRITER

  For the first time, a federal appeals court has ruled
  that a U.S. government-instigated kidnapping of an
  individual from another country violates
  international human rights law and that violation
  can be redressed in a U.S. court.

  The 3-0 ruling this week by the U.S. 9th Circuit
  Court of Appeals in San Francisco stems from the
  April 1990 abduction of Mexican physician
  Humberto Alvarez Machain. Alvarez had been
  indicted in Los Angeles three months earlier on
  charges that he was involved in the 1985
  kidnapping and murder of U.S. DEA Agent Enrique
  Camarena in Guadalajara.

  The kidnapping occurred after the Mexican
  government refused to extradite Alvarez, who was
  later acquitted in the Camarena case. The decision
  Tuesday means that Alvarez is entitled to recover a
  limited amount of damages. The Justice
  Department, however, is likely to appeal the ruling.
  In an earlier case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled
  that Alvarez could be put on trial in the United
  States despite the fact that he had been brought here
  as a result of a kidnapping.

  U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents based in
Los Angeles,
  using operatives in Mexico, orchestrated the
kidnapping. The agency
  paid about $60,000 to several Mexicans who abducted
the doctor and
  brought him to El Paso and then to Los Angeles,
according to testimony
  by a DEA operative.

  In 1992 a federal judge here acquitted Alvarez, who
was then permitted
  to return to Mexico--after more than two years of
incarceration in the
  United States. Several other men have been convicted
of involvement in
  the federal drug agent's murder and sentenced to long
prison terms.

  The ruling Tuesday was praised by Los Angeles civil
liberties lawyer
  Paul Hoffman, who has represented the doctor for more
than a decade.
  "We have been fighting for a U.S. court to rule that a
kidnapping like this
  was a violation of international law," Hoffman said.

  Justice Department attorney Robert Loeb said the
agency is considering
  seeking a rehearing from a larger panel of 9th Circuit
judges or
  appealing directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

  Alvarez's kidnapping precipitated strained relations
between the United
  States and Mexico and spawned considerable litigation.

  The decision this week evolved from a federal damage
suit that Alvarez
  filed in Los Angeles a year after he was acquitted on
the criminal
  charges. Alvarez, now 53, sued the U.S. government;
DEA agents in Los
  Angeles and Washington; Francisco Sosa, a former
Mexican policeman;
  and five other Mexican nationals, all of whom are now
in the U.S.
  witness protection program.

  The case involves important and complicated issues
involving how far
  the government can go in attempting to apprehend a
suspect abroad. On
  most of the major issues, the appeals court ruled
against the United
  States.

  In one of the most significant parts of the decision,
the 9th Circuit
  rejected the government's claim that as a sovereign
nation it was immune
  from such a suit.

  "The government admits that it knew of and acquiesced
in the plan to
  kidnap Alvarez and bring him to the United States,"
Judge Alfred T.
  Goodwin wrote in a decision joined by jurists Mary M.
Schroeder and
  Samuel P. King.

  "Sosa performed the search to assist the DEA agents.
Sosa had no
  individual interest in kidnapping Alvarez other than
to curry favor with
  the DEA agents in the hopes that they would reward
him. Therefore,
  because Sosa acted merely as an agent or instrument
for 'law
  enforcement officers,' the United States has wai

Re: Cypherpunks and terrorism

[M.D. Tate]

It's always amazing to see how stupid the responses are to various
messages.  There seems to be no limit to the ignorance of the cypherpunks.

It is well known that this is a motivation for many terrorists.  If you
will not believe it from an anonymous message, perhaps you will be
convinced by quotes from the two co-founders of the cypherpunks, both
of whom have said exactly the same thing in messages posted today:

Tim May wrote in 1996 and reposted today:




(yada yada yada. snip)




There are two contrasting forces at the heart of the cypherpunk
philosophy, well exemplified by the two co-founders, and their messages
posted today show the difference well.

The dark anger of May versus the bright hope of Hughes.  Make your choice.



Stuff your false binary choice, I prefer to think for myself.
It seems there is no limit to asininity of federal trolls.
---
Sigs? We don' need no stinking sigs!
 

RE: Cypherpunks and terrorism

[Nomen Nescio]

James Donald writes:
> Obviously this catastrophe could not have taken place without the
> unauthorized use of paper.   Paper allows people to communicate
> dangerous ideas and secret messages.
>
> With paper, anyone can communicate to large numbers of people at
> once, even if they are not properly authorized or in authority.
>
> The solution is clear.  Paper must be a government monopoly .
> Paper should only be used for government forms and official
> government statements. 

Many people have made this point, but it is so fundamentally wrong that
it's hard to believe that anyone takes it seriously.

Paper, and metal, and knives, and airplanes, and all the other things
which have been compared to anonymity tools, are different in one major
respect: it would be an inconceivable hardship to ban them.

They all have important uses for other things than committing crimes.
To ban paper or airplanes or knives would eliminate all those other uses.
Imagine a society without paper.  It could not function.  Likewise,
eliminating those other technologies would at minimum cause tremendous
harm to everyone's lives.

Can we really say the same thing about cryptography?  About steganography
tools?  About the anonymous mail services which bin Laden has been
reported to have used (yesterday on TV it was mentioned several times)?

Would commerce grind to a halt if we didn't have anonymous remailers?
Of course not.  The same with PGP and SSL and other crypto technologies
that are available to everyone.

The fact is, crypto as we know it is a luxury.  It didn't even exist ten
years ago.  None of the crypto tools we use did.  We can hardly make a
case that banning or restricting access to them will send us back into
the stone age.

Please, let's end these spurious arguments that providers of crypto tools
are no different than the people who make the metal in the airplane wings.
There's a big difference, which anyone with an ounce of sense can see.
Banning airplanes is not an option.  Banning crypto is.

RE: Cypherpunks and terrorism

[Greg Broiles]

At 09:10 PM 9/13/2001 +0200, Nomen Nescio wrote:
>The fact is, crypto as we know it is a luxury.  It didn't even exist ten
>years ago.  None of the crypto tools we use did.  We can hardly make a
>case that banning or restricting access to them will send us back into
>the stone age.
>
>Please, let's end these spurious arguments that providers of crypto tools
>are no different than the people who make the metal in the airplane wings.
>There's a big difference, which anyone with an ounce of sense can see.
>Banning airplanes is not an option.  Banning crypto is.

I get the impression that our anonymous correspondent Nomen Nescio (n.b., 
"nomen nescio" is Latin for "I do not know the the name") is suffering from 
overexposure to academic discussion, which leads (in some cases) to the 
impression that the world is full of important policy questions patiently 
awaiting discussion and analysis ad infinitum (and ad nauseum) by anyone 
who cares to play Socrates today - and that, pending resolution of 
irresolvable questions, no action shall be taken, and ongoing activities 
frozen, until perfect consensus can be reached or a widely-acclaimed policy 
can be drafted.

I propose that this sort of discussion - about whether or not, in the face 
of violence and tragedy, some aspect of human freedom and expression can be 
suitably "justified" to satisfy every self-appointed devil's advocate - is 
absolutely unproductive and serves only to suck energy and concentration 
from more interesting projects.

I don't know (and don't care) if Nomen is an authentic participant in 
cypherpunks, a nom-de-plume of another subscriber used to advance unpopular 
arguments (perhaps in hopes of eliciting stronger arguments in favor of 
that person's real beliefs), an agent provocateur, or something else .. 
Nomen's internal state is unimportant. The effect of his/her messages is to 
create a swamp of self-referential argument and discussion which advances 
nothing; and I suggest that we'd all do well to learn to ignore Nomen as 
many of us do Choate (and Vulis and Detweiler in times past.)

Accordingly, I will not answer Nomen's arguments or questions, but report 
that I have succeeded in compiling Mixmaster 2.9beta23 on the FreeBSD 4.4 
release candidate, and in concert with other cpunks, am putting together a 
2.9beta24 package which includes a number of patches recently circulated. 
We have assembled and are testing an installation of that new release on a 
well-connected machine in a favorable jurisdiction, with more "hardened" 
remailer installations on the way. I haven't had any luck yet with OpenBSD 
(despite helpful messages from two correspondents regarding IDEA and 
OpenSSL integration) but work on that subject continues.

The remailers will not be shut down without a fight - on the net and in the 
courtrooms.


--
Greg Broiles
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"We have found and closed the thing you watch us with." -- New Delhi street kids

U.S. hypocrisy about freedom of press in U.S.-hating countries

[Tim May]

On Thursday, September 13, 2001, at 09:43 AM, citizenQ wrote:

> VIA CNN this AM:
> (somewhat paraphrasing)
>
> Bush Sr., speaking to some corporate collection of cronies: "We'll also 
> have to look at this Internet thing you all know so much about, and 
> review our policies..."
>
> Gephardt: "We don't have to, we don't want to change the Constitution, 
> but there will need to be a shift in the balance between freedom and 
> security..."
>
> The planes have hit the towers but the shit has yet to hit the fan.
>


Perhaps we should rename the two towers First Amendment and Second 
Amendment.

I've seen Congressvarmints complaining that the problem with countries 
around the world is that they "allow" too much free speech. (He was 
demanding that Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Syria, and Pakistan put a stop to 
the laughter and cheers of people celebrating the WTC and Pentagon 
events.)

Some years ago I would have been shocked to hear U.S. officials calling 
for press crackdowns, but I have grown accustomed to this. The U.S. 
position in Sudan, Bosnia, etc. has been to _disarm_ ordinary farmers 
and merchants, to _control_ newspapers, and to institute random searches 
and seizures.

They argue that the Bill of Rights obviously applies to U.S. citizens 
(or, they admit, maybe to non-citizens residents in the U.S. and its 
territories). This notion that the U.S. should press for disarmament of 
civilians, for press restrictions, for warrantless searches and 
seizures, and for other such things (*), all shows the utter hypocrisy 
of the U.S.

It is rank hypocrisy for U.S. Congressmen to be calling for crackdowns 
on the press of other nations.

No wonder they laugh when we are attacked. "Look on your works, ye 
mighty, and despair."

--Tim May

Re: Cypherpunks and terrorism

[Howie Goodell]

Nomen Nescio wrote:
> 
The fact is, crypto as we know it is a luxury.  It didn't
even exist ten years ago.  None of the crypto tools we use
did.  We can hardly make a case that banning or restricting
access to them will send us back into the stone age.
>
Please, let's end these spurious arguments that providers of
crypto tools are no different than the people who make the
metal in the airplane wings.
There's a big difference, which anyone with an ounce of
sense can see.
Banning airplanes is not an option.  Banning crypto is.

I disagree.  Ten years ago neither the Web nor e-commerce
existed, either, and ordinary people had barely heard of
email or cell phones.  Their privacy was protected by the
labor and traceability of intercepting paper mail and
tapping analog phones.  Without encryption, every national
government will have technology to effortlessly spy on all
their citizens all the time.  Inevitably, some will use it. 
Saying cryptography is a luxury because it is new is like
saying seat belts are a luxury because horse-drawn carriages
didn't have them.

Howie Goodell  
-- 
Howie Goodell  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  Pr SW Eng, WearLogic
Sc.D. Cand  HCI Res Grp  CS Dept  U Massachussets Lowell
http://people.ne.mediaone.net/goodell/howie
Dying is s 20th-century!   http://www.cryonics.org

Shades of X-Files

[keyser-soze]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-

Unconfirmed reports just coming in that one of the WTC recovered bodies may be that of 
Chandra Levy...
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: Hush 2.0

wmAEARECACAFAjuhEE8ZHGtleXNlci1zb3plQGh1c2htYWlsLmNvbQAKCRAg4ui5IoBV
n78HAJ9JGJ6PIj115wGElkbvFFZ97Swl9gCcDh3zUlLiYPI+s3TlIfsMJG4y8X0=
=723M
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

theregister.co.uk: Anonymous Remailers Survive Politech Attack

[Incognito Innominatus]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/21639.html

The anonymous remailer network isn't closing, despite an alarmist and 
inaccurate story by Wired's Declan McCullagh, and postings to his own 
widely-read Politech mailing list. 

Len Sassaman, a security expert and privacy advocate who runs the Randseed 
remailer, is cited by McCullagh as having "pulled the plug" on his system 
in the wake of the World Trade Center bombings, and the report hinted that 
others had too. 

But Sassaman's system didn't go off-line and McCullagh, it turns out, 
hadn't been in touch to check. An announcement rapidly followed explaining 
that Randseed had been switched into middleman mode, which simply prevents 
it from being the last machine in the remailer chain. 

And real-time statistics at press time showed thirty six Type II 
'Mixmaster' remailers in operation, more than are usually running. Many 
more Type I remailers were also active. 

Sassaman told us that the precaution was to preempt concern about hate 
mail or threats being made using the system. His remailer processes around 
three thousand messages a day, and out of a million messages over the past 
year, only two have drawn the attention of the authorities. 

[...]

RE: Cypherpunk Threat Analysis (scramble near Crawford)

[Aimee Farr]

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
> Behalf Of Tim May
> Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2001 1:52 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Cypherpunk Threat Analysis
>
>
> On Thursday, September 13, 2001, at 08:39 AM, Aimee Farr wrote:
>
> > For the sick people in here that like to call for TNA's (target name and
> > address) for judicial officials etc.
> >
> > --
> > NLECTC Law Enforcement & Corrections Technology News Summary
> > Thursday, September 13, 2001
> > --
> > "Technological Advances in Assessing Threats to Judicial
> > Officials"
> > Sheriff (08/01) Vol. 53, No. 4, P. 34; Calhoun, Frederick S.
> >
> > The majority of sheriff offices throughout the country
> > assign personnel to handle threats made to judges according
> > to which situations pose the greatest risks. Los Angeles
>
>
> I wonder why Agent Farr warns about our list "tolerating" bomb
> discussions, and then posts her own provocateur bomb discussions.

Did not.

> I wonder why Agent Farr refers to the "sick people in here" who cite
> names of LEAs and then makes a point to cite LEA persons by _name_.

*rolls eyes*

> Agent Farr arrived from _nowhere_ just after the election last year,
> with no previous detectable online interests, on half a dozen of the
> most "controversial" mailing lists and discussion groups. She began
> baiting and provoking, and when that failed, starting her own "Bomb Law
> Reporter" and attempting to entrap discussion group participants in what
> she has claimed are "dangerous" activities.

No.

> She has recently claimed that our failure to support Big
> Brother-friendly networks makes us equivalent to the WTC actors.

Did not.

> The witch hunt began a long time ago, but it has taken on new dimensions
> recently. Expect to see the real Agent Farr, who is very probably not
> named "Aimee" in real life, testifying before Congress on his
> "undercover" operations to shut down the Cypherpunks, PGP, and
> Extropians lists.
>
> --Tim May

Oh yes, Cypherpunks, PGP and Extropiansthe heart of
darknessWhoo...big fish in here.

I don't work for Uncle.

BTW, big event skyward over my house this a.m. -- rumor is a private
aircraft near Bush Ranch. Got a scramble. Flyboys tore up the sky for a good
hour this morning. Shrwooom!!! Shrwwm

~Aimee

Re: MARTIAL LAW Cypherpunks and terrorism

[cubic-dog]

On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, !Dr. Joe Baptista wrote:

> Arabs are by default very nobel, trustworthy and honourable people.  But
> they are not cows.  They will not bow their heads as their civilization is
> brutalized and raped.  They will fight back with the vengence that is
> the holy jihad.

Not too sure, 
I certainly agree that these folks are not "cows", but as to rising
up in arms when provoked, that takes a specific type. An example would
be the so called silent majority of gun owners in America, all of
whom expressed outrage over Ruby Ridge, and then later, Waco. A lot
of these folks, if you follow the boards, bbses in those days, claimed
that after then president G.Bush Sr's assault weapons ban, that
further action on behalf of the feds would predicate a call to arms.
Well, they all stood by as these events unfolded, and they stood
by as the "fed" whitewashed all of it recently. 

> Kill Osama Bin Ladin and you create another arab saint and many more holy
> warriors take his place.  That is the nature of the beast.

Back to the previous analogy, The silent majority of gun owners had
a Bin Ladin in Timmy McVea. They backed away from him as fast as possible
after the bombing, and no new Timmy has stepped up to take his place. 
So, in my ignorance, I think that a few extremists basically screw up the
dialogue for everyone involved, the sooner these folks are out of the
equation, the better for all parties. I think a lot of "victims of
American Policy" believe this as well. It was different for the last
8 years when the commander in chief lacked resolve and seriously
emboldened many forigen enemies. These "surgical" air strikes do little
more than really piss folks off. A "war" has to be won on the ground. 
I think there is a certain level of resolve that has galvanised over
these last few days. I expect that action, when taken, will be pretty
decisive. 
 
As to your other points, I belive they are well stated, I just disagree. 

CNN Using 1991 Footage of Celebrating Palestinians?

[Matthew Gaylor]

CNN Using 1991 Footage of Celebrating Palestinians

Can anyone verify this?

http://www.indymedia.org.il/imc/israel/webcast/display.php3?article_id=6946



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Re: "Alejandro transports"

[Sampo Syreeni]

On Wed, 12 Sep 2001, Eric Murray wrote:

>I think I have seen examples of this before, but I can't remember
>where.  Does anyone know who or what generates it?
>[example snipped]

Looks like random stuff/stego generated using a jargon file for nouns. The
grammar is coherent, so it is likely built on top of a generative grammar --
the like of PostModernism Generator. I remember seeing a commercial product
capable of this, somewhere, but don't have a link.

Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED], gsm: +358-50-5756111
student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front

An assault on liberty?

[Peter Wayner]

I realize that many will use this event as an excuse for many 
political agendas, but I think it's important that we think through 
exactly what happened. It doesn't seem like it was an assault on 
liberty or a misuse of the liberties we have. Most people can't fly 
planes. The learning process is long and the licensing requirements 
are many. Flying a 757 is even more restricted by both cost and 
licensing requirements. It's not a liberty like walking around the 
streets or speaking one's mind.

It doesn't seem to me that this attack had anything to do with 
liberty. It's not like someone abused the right to bear arms by 
shooting someone, it's not like someone abused the right to speak 
freely by libeling someone, it's not like someone abused the right to 
drink alcohol by plowing into a school bus after drinking too much. 
These guys were unauthorized to have knives, they were unauthorized 
to have bombs, they were unauthorized to fly 757s, they were probably 
unauthorized to be in the country. Yet they did all of these despite 
the controls.

The hard lesson is that controls don't always work. Licensing 
requirements, security checkpoints, and armed guards fail. It's sad, 
but there's no physical law like gravity that we can depend upon to 
keep ourselves safe.


If you ask me, the biggest danger is that we'll add more ineffective 
security measures in the hopes of doing something.  And the real 
problem is the controls may never be enough to keep us safe.

-Peter

Re: J. Neil Schulman On I can't take it anymore ....

[Derek Balling]

At 10:28 PM -0700 9/12/01, Steve Schear wrote:
>>If local police officers who fly were allowed to carry their guns with
>>them, warned only to switch to frangible ammunition, this couldn't have
>>happened.
>
>But they are.  On U.S. domestic flights they have merely to present 
>themselves and acceptable credentials (which BTW the airline 
>personnel are poorly trained to authenticate) and state in a form 
>that they are traveling for LE purposes.  There are other 
>formalities that are followed, but overall they are not restricted 
>from carrying.

But why should it have to be "for law enforcement purposes"? Is the 
LEO somehow "less capable of handling his firearm properly" because 
he's not travelling to LGA to pick up a prisoner?

D

-- 
+-+-+
| [EMAIL PROTECTED]  | "Conan! What is best in life?"  |
|  Derek J. Balling   | "To crush your enemies, see them|
| |driven before you, and to hear the   |
| |lamentation of their women!" |
+-+-+

Unable to pay your supplier

[mark6542]

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-- Eugen* Leitl http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204/";>leitl
__
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-- Forwarded message --
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 08:25:22 -0400
From: David Farber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: IP: [ I take it back djf ] U.S. Intelligence Gathering Reviewed


>U.S. Intelligence Gathering Reviewed
>
>By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
>
>
>
>Filed at 7:11 a.m. ET
>
>NEW YORK (AP) -- A current emphasis on technology over human
>intelligence-gathering, a funding shortage and an information
>overload may help explain U.S. intelligence agencies' failure to
>forestall the worst terror attack on American soil.
>
>``Our raw intelligence has gotten weaker, partly because we're not
>hiring, we're not paying and we're not analyzing what we're
>collecting,'' said Anthony Cordesman, an anti-terrorism expert with
>the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International
>Studies.
>
>His comments echoed those of former Secretary of State James A.
>Baker III, who told CNN that ``it would be well ... to consider
>beefing up some of our intelligence capabilities, particularly in
>the areas of human intelligence.''
>
>That's easier said than done, said Gideon Rose, managing editor of
>Foreign Affairs magazine.
>
>``It's incredibly difficult to find the right people who can
>infiltrate these groups,'' Rose said. ``As far as making other
>changes, it means going up against Washington's bureaucratic
>inertia.''
>
>During the Cold War, the United States began pouring billions into
>satellite imagery, communications interception and reconnaissance
>equipment. The tools were also useful in monitoring the moves of
>organizations such as the PLO and the IRA -- which had traditional,
>low-tech structures that were relatively easy to follow.
>
>But the extraordinary costs meant cutbacks in personnel at the CIA
>and the National Security Agency, the nation's international
>eavesdropping arm.
>
>As the Cold War came to a close, the number of threatening groups
>increased tenfold just as the digital revolution hit, making global
>communications suddenly very cheap and secure. Meanwhile, the
>numbers of people working in U.S. intelligence remained constant.
>
>These days, terrorists can download sophisticated encryption
>software on the Internet for free, making it increasingly difficult
>to tap into their communications.
>
>One recent report said Osama bin Laden, a suspect in Tuesday's
>attacks, has used complex digital masking technology called
>steganography to send photos over the Internet bearing hidden
>messages.
>
>The head of NSA, Gen. Mike Hayden, acknowledged in an interview
>with CBS' ``60 Minutes II'' earlier this year that his agency is
>``behind the curve in keeping up with the global telecommunications
>revolution,'' adding that bin Laden ``has better technology'' than
>the agency.
>
>Former national security adviser Sandy Berger said Wednesday that
>the terrorists responsible for Tuesday's carnage displayed ``a
>level of sophistication that is beyond what any intelligence outfit
>thought was possible.'' Yet, many believe the perpetrators used
>low-tech methods to elude Western intelligence.
>
>Wayne Madsen, a former NSA intelligence officer, said he believes
>the terrorists shunned e-mail and mobile phones, using couriers and
>safe houses instead. He said it was likely the terrorists in each
>of Tuesday's four hijacked planes didn't know the others existed.
>
>Terrorist ``cells are kept small and very independent so
>intelligence agencies can't establish any sort of network,'' Madsen
>said.
>
>Others say the big problem is not the technological shortcomings
>but the inability to get inside tightly-knit organizations such as
>bin Laden's.
>
>``It's not easy to knock on bin Laden's cave and say we'd like to
>join,'' said Frank Cilluffo, a senior analyst at the Center for
>Strategic and International Studies. ``These are hard targets for
>Americans to infiltrate and we need to recruit the kind of people
>who have the language and the cultural understanding to gain access
>to these organizations.''
>
>Eugene Carroll, a Navy admiral and a defense expert, agreed.
>``These people can only be countered by superb intelligence. The
>U.S. doesn't have it,'' he said.
>
>Experts say intelligence-gathering, to be effective, must involve
>close coordination between eavesdropping and spying. In practical
>terms, this means cooperation between the NSA and CIA.
>
>Madsen said there is reason to believe the NSA received some good
>intelligence showing bin Laden's involvement in Tuesday's attacks
>but that it wasn't recognized as such.
>
>``There's an information overload out there and not surprisingly it
>becomes very hard to process, prioritize it and share it,'' said
>Ian Lesser at the Rand Corporation think tank.
>
>Others said 

The WTC was designed by the late Minoru Yamasaki

[Matthew Gaylor]

Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 08:11:01 -0700
To: (Gravy Letter Honorable Subscriber)
From: GRAVY <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: GRAVY on the attack

Fire is what brought the towers down. An engineer friend explained 
that after a fire burns for awhile, the steel holding up the 
structure softens. When it fails, the part above falls with impact on 
the part below, which causes progressive collapse of the building, or 
pancaking, as one floor crunches onto the next onto the next. Once 
one floor goes there is no stopping it.

The World Trade Center was likely designed to last 1-2 hours in a 
major fire, long enough for most people to evacuate. The tower that 
fell first lasted 57 minutes, in a fire driven by 100,000 pounds of 
jet fuel. No one anticipated that part when the building was 
designed, and there is no way to build a building to withstand such 
an event. The TV newscasters who keep asking what could have been 
done to make the buildings more resistant should go home.

An astonishing thing is the way the towers collapsed straight down. 
As horrifying as that was, imagine how much more damage and loss of 
life there would have been would have been if they had tipped over 
like falling trees, landing on surrounding buildings for a quarter 
mile.

A building demolition expert interviewed on NPR said that what made 
the disciplined collapse possible was the external skeleton, the 
girders that lined the edges of the towers. These girders contained 
the collapse. The expert considered this an extraordinary achievement 
by the architect.

The World Trade Center was designed by the late Minoru Yamasaki, at 
the firm of Skilling, Ward, Magnusson and Barkshire, in Seattle. You 
have to think it's good he didn't live to see this. The rest of his 
firm is said to be shock, as are the employees of Boeing, whose 
engineers are acutely aware of the destructive energy contained in a 
767 going three hundred miles an hour and full of fuel.


A few random notes:

This attack seems different from Pearl Harbor in the same way that 
the Vietnam War seemed different to fight than previous wars, which 
is that the enemy did not stand up and "fight like a man," but rather 
was hidden, hard to find, and devious, as well as surprising. The 
British felt the same way about the American "irregulars" in the 
revolutionary war. They felt we weren't fighting fairly or properly. 
In all three cases, one side deliberately ignored the "code of war" 
of the time to powerful effect.

In this way the definition of war changes. It just changed again, 
whether we like it or not. Whatever we do to retaliate risks an 
escalation of terrorist-style attacks on American citizens. We will 
not get to watch our distant military on newsreels and TV like the 
old days.

One of the things that makes this scary is that we have found a bomb, 
and it is everywhere. Every plane is a terrific bomb for a pilot who 
is willing to die.

This attack has been called cowardly. That's silly. It was no more 
cowardly than flying a stealth fighter loaded with smart bombs into 
Iraq, when by the same definition the uncowardly thing would have 
been to ride in on a camel with a broadsword.

The plane that crashed in Pennsylvania was headed for Washington but 
the plan was foiled by the passengers who had heard what the planes 
did in New York. Bravo. Instead of banning knives, perhaps we should 
issue one to every passenger on all commercial flights.

This attack was a huge failure of American military intelligence.

This attack points up the value of an unworkable and insanely 
expensive missile defense system. For those of you who are sleepy, 
that value would be zero.

Bush said that we were attacked because we believe in freedom. This 
is not why we were attacked. There is much about the execution of our 
foreign policy that rarely makes it into US news reports. If you have 
lived abroad for more than a few months, you have seen this. If not, 
it is educational to talk to someone who has. At the same time, 
nearly all Arabs and other Muslims abhor terrorism. The 
Arab-Americans I know are as dismayed and horrified as we are.

Our airport security has always been a joke. My dad's crutches were 
consistently handed around the inspection points by the nice people 
working there. All I could think was how much explosive or how many 
knives and zip guns I could have packed into each crutch, while they 
were busy making business travelers go through their briefcases.

It is hard to fight people who believe they will achieve martyrdom 
and go to heaven following a suicide attack for their cause. It is an 
impossible stretch for us to understand how our enemy thinks when it 
is that different from how we think. It is difficult to protect 
yourself from someone who does not value his life on this earth.

Of course fight them we shall. No one gets to do what they did. We 
need to start by repealing some laws, like the one that says we can't 
use intelligence agents to infilt

Cypherpunk Threat Analysis

[Aimee Farr]

For the sick people in here that like to call for TNA's (target name and
address) for judicial officials etc.

--
NLECTC Law Enforcement & Corrections Technology News Summary
Thursday, September 13, 2001
--
"Technological Advances in Assessing Threats to Judicial
Officials"
Sheriff (08/01) Vol. 53, No. 4, P. 34; Calhoun, Frederick S.

The majority of sheriff offices throughout the country
assign personnel to handle threats made to judges according
to which situations pose the greatest risks. Los Angeles
security consulting firm Gavin de Becker has developed an
advanced threat-management system that incorporates
computers. Assessing which threat poses the most risk to
court officials or jurors is difficult. According to the
U.S. Marshals Service's case files, people making threats
rarely carry them through. Gavin de Becker's MOSAIC program
provides a series of questions designed to assess the
potential risk posed by different situations and people. The
Supreme Court Police use the program for ensuring the safety
of the chief justices. (www.sheriffs.org)

~Aimee

Letter to U.S. Agencies

[Blanc]

I am sending this to certain appropriate representatives:


Osama Bin Ladin said in an interview: "We have seen in the last decade the
decline of the American government and the weakness of the American soldier
who is ready to wage Cold Wars and unprepared to fight long wars."

But American soldiers are not the only ones who are "weak and unprepared":
every new threat against America (both externally and from within) produces
efforts to increase security by the method of weakening already defenseless
civilians even further.

Every new threat against the nation means we the individuals must become
more transparent, that we must allow greater trespass against the sanctity
of our private lives, and forsake personal authority over our circumstances,
in order that official policing agencies may be assured that we are not
criminals, that we have no evil intentions against others, that we are not
concealing secret plans against the State.

To ensure against the potential threat of enemies among us, our power to act
is deemed necessary to circumscribe and an attempt to control the use of any
utensil is extended beyond common sense:  we are pressured to give up any
technology or instrument which could potentially be turned to a destructive
purpose; we must not carry or be given any kind of tool, no matter how
normally innocuous, which could be employed abnormally as a weapon.

If this goes on, we will all become as babes in the woods - naked, disabled,
and totally dependent upon paranoic caretakers for protection.  The U.S.
will become like the former U.S.S.R.

The whole load of responsibility for safety cannot be carried by only a few.
The damage to the World Trade Center towers resulted in the fall of the
interior levels and the total collapse of the buildings.  Like these towers,
the most impressive free nation on the planet could fall under terrorism
because its interior - we the people - lack the wherewithal to act in their
own behalf.

President Bush remarked that "This is an enemy who preys on unsuspecting
people."   Unsuspecting people who are unpracticed and unprepared.  We all
must be allowed to participate in our own defense. We should not be
prevented from accoutering ourselves properly in order that we may respond
appropriately to danger and be of practical use toward normality and our own
security and safety.

  ..
Blanc

RE: Manhattan Mid-Afternoon

[jamesd]

--
On 12 Sep 2001, at 14:59, Trei, Peter wrote:
> I sincerely hope that the remaining perpetrators of this 
> atrocity are found and punished, but entertain no illusions 
> that doing so will prevent future attacks. That can only come 
> from a shift of US government attitude from "I've got the 
> biggest stick", to one of non-interference.

If it turns out that some of the terrorists were people who were 
beaten up a few times too many by Israeli soldiers, then the US 
government's only effectual remedy is to stop its alliance with 
Israel.

If, however, it turns out that all the terrorists were from some 
countries that are unfree, poor and miserable, and are outraged
by the fact that we are free, rich and happy, and blame us,
rather than themselves, for their poverty and misery, then the
only way to appease them would be to become unfree and poor.  I
would rather toast the entire third world, than make such a
concession. 

--digsig
 James A. Donald
 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
 Y7uaIORhvsiSNFbd3uvHLO13Q10f+FGbxTR+8Hs+
 4oZbuoQ/ovQxHW9rYGsfEYtOODo7dZvu+F4J7s4Xi

Re: J. Neil Schulman On I can't take it anymore ....

[Declan McCullagh]

This is what I vaguely recall -- I didn't write about it myself. I recall 
it was a GAO investigation that the Post wrote about. --Declan

At 08:27 AM 9/13/01 -0700, Steve Schear wrote:
>At 10:01 AM 9/13/2001 -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>>On Wed, Sep 12, 2001 at 10:28:24PM -0700, Steve Schear wrote:
>> > But they are.  On U.S. domestic flights they have merely to present
>> > themselves and acceptable credentials (which BTW the airline personnel are
>> > poorly trained to authenticate) and state in a form that they are 
>> traveling
>> > for LE purposes.  There are other formalities that are followed, but
>> > overall they are not restricted from carrying.
>>
>>I believe after a Washington Post expose a few months ago (or perhaps
>>it was just concidental) this rule was changed.
>
>I was not aware.  Thanks for the info.
>
>steve

Re: Cypherpunks and terrorism

[Sunder]

On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, Nomen Nescio wrote:

> Declan McCullagh writes:
> > On Wed, Sep 12, 2001 at 06:00:46PM +0200, Nomen Nescio wrote:
> > > Some terrorists have exactly this as their goal.  They are hoping
> > > to trigger a counter-reaction, an over-reaction, by the authorities.
> > > They want to see a crackdown on liberties, a police state.  This will
> > > weaken the enemy and demoralize him.  It will increase hostility and
> > > make the population less willing to support the government.
> >
> > This is nonsense. I suspect the bin Laden want the U.S. to stop
> > handing Israel billions of dollars a year in aid and weapons. Not
> > bombing pharmecutical plants and lifting an embargo that kills
> > hundreds of thousands (allegedly) of Iraqi women and children might be
> > a nice move too.
> 
> It's always amazing to see how stupid the responses are to various
> messages.  There seems to be no limit to the ignorance of the cypherpunks.

There is certainly no limit to the stupidity of those who would try to
twist our views to those of trolls, schills, and fools.  Any two bit moron
can tell us what we should think.  I believe it is our responsability to
point this out publically, and let others take notice that we are subtly
manipulated by those with an agenda.

If you are indeed the same anonymous troll (note: not that I believe
anonymous remailers are bad!) who yesterday posted that cryptography was
bad, that cypherpunks are responsible in any way shape or form with this
terrorist act, that the DMCA and the like are good, my answer to you is
still: Go fuck yourself.

The terrorists have several agendas certainly.  One of which is causing
fear uncertainty and doubt.  Sadly, there are reports that this is
somewhat sucessful.  I personally, do not and will not feel fear,
uncertainty or doubt.  I will not allow this event to cloud or otherwise
alter the way in which I live.  The only change in me, and again, I do not
claim to speak for others, is that I feel rage towards them.

I do not believe that any heightened security measures at airports or
anywhere else will prevent this sort of thing from happening
again.  Previously, they had used guns, now they used knives, to
hijack airplanes.  Previously they have used car bombs.  I do not believe
they will continue to do the same because of the clampdowns.

But it is silly to think that anything short of hunting these bastards
down would stop them.  Curtailing any of our freedoms is inherently a bad
side effect, and mark my words, will not prevent further attacks.

One good thing that comes out of this is the deployment of sky marshals as
they are being called.  Finally someone somewhere has sense enough to
realize that "Gun" is not a four letter word and is necessary.

But what happens when they manage to switch places with a sky marshal and
thus have a vector of infiltration?  Shouldn't the pilots, crew and yes,
even passengers have guns?  Again, I operate with the full and confident
knowlege that 90+% of the population is good and law abiding.  That
allowing the public to be its own defender is by far more effective than
disarming them.

The one proven effective way to deal with them was displayed by the heros
who rushed the cabin and forced the fourth plane down in Pittsburgh.  We
as a society have become too complacent, too much the sheeple.  We must
re-learn what the founders of this country knew.  That liberty must be
defended and fought for.  With our lives.  We must not restrict our
freedoms, we must rather fight back with everything we've got.

The terroristas' agenda may be one of revenge, FUD, economic collapse, and
wishes to cause the public to force the government to change our policies
towards Israel and interfearing in their countries.

They do not wish us to tighten security, for that would work against them,
but in a very real sense, if we do, we allow their acts to curtail our
freedoms, and that is the only thing that separates our country's form of
government from the Taliban run Afghanistan.  

Yes, we have more land, more resources, a better economy than they do.  
But our freedoms are key to this success as Soviet run Russia has shown.  
Freedom is what has made us prosperous, and if we curtail it, we march
towards the evil that is totalitarianism regardless of which face it wears
(monarchist, religeous, fascist, socialist, or communist.)

Sure, it was a stupid idea for the USA to help create the state of Israel
by taking land from Arabs that already hate Israelites and by placing it
square in the center of said Arabs, of placing the lamb so it is
surrounded by wolves.  Sure it was stupid of the USA to train and arm
these bastards* when they were called "Freedom fighters."

But the stupidest thing we have done is to allow them to live and grow.  
Never let an enemy stand is the golden rule, and perhaps now we have
learned it.  When someone declares war on the USA, even if they're just a
bunch of guys that live in tents and fuck camels fo

RE: Cypherpunks and terrorism

[jamesd]

--
On 12 Sep 2001, at 18:00, Nomen Nescio wrote:
> Maybe our own policies and beliefs have turned against us, to
> our detriment.  There have been a number of reports that bin
> Laden uses cryptography and even steganography tools.  This
> could still have a significant crypto connection.

Obviously this catastrophe could not have taken place without the
unauthorized use of paper.   Paper allows people to communicate
dangerous ideas and secret messages.

With paper, anyone can communicate to large numbers of people at
once, even if they are not properly authorized or in authority.

The solution is clear.  Paper must be a government monopoly .
Paper should only be used for government forms and official
government statements. 

--digsig
 James A. Donald
 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
 AX7IyUtEmXvrShOs/Y1uEELi2xLS9MvBdLhpNDcF
 43NVXCeYgSl5wL3xCAajeDqKq7BHzzaaz6RUzAgow

RE: Manhattan Mid-Afternoon

[Eugene Leitl]

On Thu, 13 Sep 2001 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> If, however, it turns out that all the terrorists were from some
> countries that are unfree, poor and miserable, and are outraged by the
> fact that we are free, rich and happy, and blame us, rather than
> themselves, for their poverty and misery, then the only way to appease
> them would be to become unfree and poor.  I would rather toast the
> entire third world, than make such a concession.

Get a clue, quick.

Anonymizer "Op Safe Investigation" / Official Anonymity

[Aimee Farr]

"Anonymizer.com Launches 'Operation Safe Investigation' to
Help Law Enforcement and Journalism Professionals Maintain
Anonymity and Safety Online"
PRNewswire (09/06/01)
NLECTC Law Enforcement & Corrections Technology News Summary
Thursday, September 13, 2001
...
Anonymizer.com just debuted its "Operation Safe
Investigation" program to protect the identities of law
enforcement agents and journalists conducting investigations
via the Internet. Under the program, the company will
allocate as many as 25 user licenses for its Anonymous
Surfing service. Accounts remain active for a period of
three months, but participants will receive an option to
continue using the licenses at a reduced cost in the future.
Law enforcement officials require anonymity to conduct
investigations about the activities of Web surfers suspected
of criminal activities and for accessing certain Web sites
that show different Web pages based on a user's identity. In
addition to allowing investigators to effectively conceal
their identities, the service provides protection from
various security and privacy threats found on the Web.
(www.prnewswire.com)

~Aimee

Anonymity would be a greater aid to LEA to grease _incoming_ information
flows.

I've got flyboys scratching the sky here all a.m. -
Shrwwoom Shrwwom!!! Serious play up there.

Re: J. Neil Schulman On I can't take it anymore ....

[Steve Schear]

At 10:01 AM 9/13/2001 -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>On Wed, Sep 12, 2001 at 10:28:24PM -0700, Steve Schear wrote:
> > But they are.  On U.S. domestic flights they have merely to present
> > themselves and acceptable credentials (which BTW the airline personnel are
> > poorly trained to authenticate) and state in a form that they are 
> traveling
> > for LE purposes.  There are other formalities that are followed, but
> > overall they are not restricted from carrying.
>
>I believe after a Washington Post expose a few months ago (or perhaps
>it was just concidental) this rule was changed.

I was not aware.  Thanks for the info.

steve

G. Bush Sr., Gephardt on shift in privacy balance

[citizenQ]

VIA CNN this AM:
(somewhat paraphrasing)

Bush Sr., speaking to some corporate collection of cronies: "We'll also have to look 
at this Internet thing you all know so much about, and review our policies..."

Gephardt: "We don't have to, we don't want to change the Constitution, but there will 
need to be a shift in the balance between freedom and security..."

The planes have hit the towers but the shit has yet to hit the fan.

low tech, high concept

[Reese]

For those who prattle about massive planning for this attack on those
Way Too Crumbly buildings:



Low tech High concept attack.  You could use Microsoft Flight sim 2 to learn
how to fly a 767.  I have a plastic knife made by Glock that is very sharp.
You could use the internet and Travelocity .com to book the appropriately
flights.  I think that it was executed very well.  My hats off to who ever
did this, but in my other hand is my 1911.



There is one brain behind all this.  Find it and barbecue it on skewers,
along with whoever and whatever fosters its existence.

Reese

Re: New FAA measures likely to fail as well

[Tim May]

[I am removing Politech from the dist. list. Cross-posting to mulitple 
lists is a terrible idea. Decide which list you want to talk on, then do 
it _there_.]

On Thursday, September 13, 2001, at 08:48 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> --
> On 12 Sep 2001, at 19:24, Steve Schear wrote:
>> The knife ban won't work against anyone with even a smidgen of
>> metal detector knowledge.  Anyone can purchase a razor sharp
>> ceramic knife like this one
>> http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:Rd6ExOvaDz8:www.smarthome.
>> com/9126.html+ceramic+knife&hl=en
>
> Better still, this lovely little ceramic knife
> http://www.argussupply.com/images/boker-2040.gif is street legal
> in California.  Get one now!

I've had that exact Boker ceramic knife for about 5-7 years now.

Of no use for bypassing metal scanners, as the case/handle is titanium. 
(Titanium is not ferromagnetic, but metal detectors work by inducing 
eddy currents, which is why aluminum is detected by metal scanners.)

Furthermore, the blade is alumina (aluminum oxide, Al2O3) and should 
show up clearly on x-ray scans. So should the titanium.

More interesting are the various plastic knives the CIA has used for 
many decades. Hard enough to cut flesh, but won't show up on either 
metal detectors or x-ray scans. (Sen. Feinswine: "We must put an end to 
the unauthorized use of plastic. We must enact a ban on discussion of 
these Undetectable Assault Knives. It's for the children!")

The next set of hijackers will carry quick-acting cyanide solutions in 
aerosol spray bottles: spraying a couple of stewardesses will be as 
effective in terrifying the rest as stabbing them was in this recent 
attack.

--Tim May

Re: Cypherpunks and terrorism

[Sunder]

On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, Nomen Nescio wrote:

> Declan McCullagh writes:
> > On Wed, Sep 12, 2001 at 06:00:46PM +0200, Nomen Nescio wrote:
> > > Some terrorists have exactly this as their goal.  They are hoping
> > > to trigger a counter-reaction, an over-reaction, by the authorities.
> > > They want to see a crackdown on liberties, a police state.  This will
> > > weaken the enemy and demoralize him.  It will increase hostility and
> > > make the population less willing to support the government.
> >
> > This is nonsense. I suspect the bin Laden want the U.S. to stop
> > handing Israel billions of dollars a year in aid and weapons. Not
> > bombing pharmecutical plants and lifting an embargo that kills
> > hundreds of thousands (allegedly) of Iraqi women and children might be
> > a nice move too.
> 
> It's always amazing to see how stupid the responses are to various
> messages.  There seems to be no limit to the ignorance of the cypherpunks.

There is certainly no limit to the stupidity of those who would try to
twist our views to those of trolls, schills, and fools.  Any two bit moron
can tell us what we should think.  I believe it is our responsability to
point this out publically, and let others take notice that we are subtly
manipulated by those with an agenda.

If you are indeed the same anonymous troll (note: not that I believe
anonymous remailers are bad!) who yesterday posted that cryptography was
bad, that cypherpunks are responsible in any way shape or form with this
terrorist act, that the DMCA and the like are good, my answer to you is
still: Go fuck yourself.

The terrorists have several agendas certainly.  One of which is causing
fear uncertainty and doubt.  Sadly, there are reports that this is
somewhat sucessful.  I personally, do not and will not feel fear,
uncertainty or doubt.  I will not allow this event to cloud or otherwise
alter the way in which I live.  The only change in me, and again, I do not
claim to speak for others, is that I feel rage towards them.

I do not believe that any heightened security measures at airports or
anywhere else will prevent this sort of thing from happening
again.  Previously, they had used guns, now they used knives, to
hijack airplanes.  Previously they have used car bombs.  I do not believe
they will continue to do the same because of the clampdowns.

But it is silly to think that anything short of hunting these bastards
down would stop them.  Curtailing any of our freedoms is inherently a bad
side effect, and mark my words, will not prevent further attacks.

One good thing that comes out of this is the deployment of sky marshals as
they are being called.  Finally someone somewhere has sense enough to
realize that "Gun" is not a four letter word and is necessary.

But what happens when they manage to switch places with a sky marshal and
thus have a vector of infiltration?  Shouldn't the pilots, crew and yes,
even passengers have guns?  Again, I operate with the full and confident
knowlege that 90+% of the population is good and law abiding.  That
allowing the public to be its own defender is by far more effective than
disarming them.

The one proven effective way to deal with them was displayed by the heros
who rushed the cabin and forced the fourth plane down in Pittsburgh.  We
as a society have become too complacent, too much the sheeple.  We must
re-learn what the founders of this country knew.  That liberty must be
defended and fought for.  With our lives.  We must not restrict our
freedoms, we must rather fight back with everything we've got.

The terroristas' agenda may be one of revenge, FUD, economic collapse, and
wishes to cause the public to force the government to change our policies
towards Israel and interfearing in their countries.

They do not wish us to tighten security, for that would work against them,
but in a very real sense, if we do, we allow their acts to curtail our
freedoms, and that is the only thing that separates our country's form of
government from the Taliban run Afghanistan.  

Yes, we have more land, more resources, a better economy than they do.  
But our freedoms are key to this success as Soviet run Russia has shown.  
Freedom is what has made us prosperous, and if we curtail it, we march
towards the evil that is totalitarianism regardless of which face it wears
(monarchist, religeous, fascist, socialist, or communist.)

Sure, it was a stupid idea for the USA to help create the state of Israel
by taking land from Arabs that already hate Israelites and by placing it
square in the center of said Arabs, of placing the lamb so it is
surrounded by wolves.  Sure it was stupid of the USA to train and arm
these bastards* when they were called "Freedom fighters."

But the stupidest thing we have done is to allow them to live and grow.  
Never let an enemy stand is the golden rule, and perhaps now we have
learned it.  When someone declares war on the USA, even if they're just a
bunch of guys that live in tents and fuck camels fo

Let's launch an 'all-armed, all-smoking' airline

[Matthew Gaylor]

Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 18:38:28 -0700
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Vin Suprynowicz)
Subject: Oct. 10 column -- "free market" in the skies?



 FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED OCT. 10, 1999
 THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
 Let's launch an 'all-armed, all-smoking' airline


 A number of readers wrote in response to my column of Oct. 3, about
bored functionaries "randomly" rooting through my laundry and personal
effects even after my bags have cleared our now-standard metal detectors
and X-ray machines.

   Many noted that private airlines have a right of private contract, which
should allow them to set any such requirements they please, since we
passengers always have the right to patronize another airline.

   I'm familiar with the argument for freedom of voluntary contract. In this
case, it's purest steer manure.

   Suppose I raised $100 million and proposed to start AirGanja, "America's
only all-armed, all-smoking airline"? I'd beef up my on-board air
conditioning so I could advertise that our air quality is better than our
competitors' even if the passengers on either side of you choose to
chain-smoke cigars. My "flight attendants" would hand out free marijuana in
First Class once airborne, and politely offer each boarding passenger a
metal magazine (or revolver speed-loader) full or any caliber ammo they
choose, urging them to reload their weapons for the duration of the flight
with my special color-coded frangible rounds, designed to blow the head off
any hijacker without penetrating our pressure cabins.

   (Needless to say, "controlled" drugs could not be used until we're
airborne, at which point we're out of the jurisdiction of any local
prohibitionist deviants -- the precedent already having been set by the
fact that no airline today will refuse to sell you a cocktail while they're
passing over the dry counties of Texas or Tennessee.)

   Of course, I'd charge a 15 percent premium for these improved services.
Either I'd grow rich -- forcing my competitors to start offering some of
the same options and services -- or, if my idea proved unpopular with the
paying public, I'd go bankrupt.

   That would be a free market in air travel, and you would indeed remain
free to choose a "non-smoking, no guns," strip-search airline (if that
somehow makes you feel safer) instead of mine.

   Chance the FAA would allow me to launch such a competing service? Pinch
yourself; you're dreaming.

   If such suggestions now sound absurd, it's only because we've forgotten
what it was like to live in a free country. The average train passenger in
1912 could easily have found herself seated opposite a fellow passenger
armed with a loaded revolver (concealed or otherwise), smoking an Indian
hemp cigarette, and carrying a hip flask of laudanum. In fact, your
great-grandmother would probably have felt somewhat more secure under such
circumstances, knowing this fellow American was prepared to resist any
attempted train robbery, as well as to provide a sip of cough syrup should
the baby (your grandfather) grow fretful.

   The fact that we find it unthinkable today that an airline might be
allowed any such options only means we have grown used to living under a
burgeoning variety of fascism, an economic system in which private
corporations are allowed to keep private title to their properties and
extract certain after-tax profits (providing they don't grow large enough
to attract the attention of the "Anti-Trust Division"), but where all
substantive decisions about routes, "security," and so forth are actually
made on a "one-size-fits-all" basis by unelected government functionaries.

   To argue any part of the current scenario is a true "voluntary, free
contract" between passenger and airline is like saying the Todt
Organization's slave laborers in various cannon works in Nazi Germany had
no right to blame the government for their plight, since they'd entered
into a "voluntary contract" with their employer.

   ("Volunteer for this labor contract, or go to the death camps. Choose
quickly.")

   "Voluntary contract," indeed. I'm free "to not use their service" -- and
try to find a passenger train with regular service from Colorado Springs to
Las Vegas? And how long do you think we'll be free from having our luggage
searched and being require to show our "government-issued photo ID" on the
trains and highways?

   Whoops. "Random highway checkpoint" stops are already part of the War on
Drugs, aren't they? And reporter P.L. Wyckoff of The Newark (N.J.)
Star-Ledger reported this week:

   "They haven't attracted the attention that drug searches on the New
Jersey Turnpike and other highways have. But charges of racial profiling
are being leveled on another busy battlefield in the drug war -- the
nation's trains and train stations.

  "Larry Bland, a black Bethesda, Md., resident, says he had just walked off
a train in Richmond, Va., in July when police told him they needed to
search his bag b

RE: Cypherpunks and terrorism

[cubic-dog]

> Many people have made this point, but it is so fundamentally wrong that
> it's hard to believe that anyone takes it seriously.

No one really does.
 
> Paper, and metal, and knives, and airplanes, and all the other things
> which have been compared to anonymity tools, are different in one major
> respect: it would be an inconceivable hardship to ban them.
> 
> Can we really say the same thing about cryptography?  About steganography
> tools?  About the anonymous mail services which bin Laden has been
> reported to have used (yesterday on TV it was mentioned several times)?

What you are really talking about when you talk about cryptography is
privacy, is individuality, is self determination. 

Certainly commerce wouldnt' grind to halt if these trivialities were
dispensed with. After all, Commerce really is what it is all about
isn't it? With the supreme court of the us making judgements on what
is good for the consumer, now that the old term taxpayer,or even
the arcane term citizen no longer applies. 
 
> Would commerce grind to a halt if we didn't have anonymous remailers?
> Of course not.  The same with PGP and SSL and other crypto technologies
> that are available to everyone.
> 
> The fact is, crypto as we know it is a luxury.  It didn't even exist ten
> years ago.  

Many things "didn't exist" 10 years ago. The real ability to completely
and totally enumerate and track every single transaction and action of
every single person and store them to be used if not right away to punish
immoral acts, at least keep them on file so that it can be done when 
the incarceration system gets streamlined. 

I've heard many calls for complete biometric id systems to be put in
place for airline access over the last few days. With such a system, why
just use it for gov building access and airports? Why not for banks,
7/11 phone cards, groceries, rent payment etc ad whatever. As more and
more trangressions become felonised, and more and crimes become
federalised, soon we should be able to deny anything to anyone on
pretty much a whim. Governments go bad. Many believe governments 
are bad period. Hence, crypto. It is the only technological response
to a technological society.

> None of the crypto tools we use did.  We can hardly make a
> case that banning or restricting access to them will send us back into
> the stone age.
> 
> Please, let's end these spurious arguments that providers of crypto tools
> are no different than the people who make the metal in the airplane wings.
> There's a big difference, which anyone with an ounce of sense can see.
> Banning airplanes is not an option.  Banning crypto is.

Re: CNN Using 1991 Footage of Celebrating Palestinians?

[lizard]

Matthew Gaylor wrote:
> 
> CNN Using 1991 Footage of Celebrating Palestinians
> 
> Can anyone verify this?
> 
> http://www.indymedia.org.il/imc/israel/webcast/display.php3?article_id=6946
> 
Reading through the following comments, it seems unlikely. Possible, but
unlikely. The evidence, at this point, consists of an obviously anti-US
poster referring to an unnamed Professor with an unseen tape. That's
pretty low on the rely-o-meter.

I won't say it's impossible, but I want a better source.

Congress mulls crypto restrictions in response to attacks

[Declan McCullagh]

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46816,00.html

Congress Mulls Stiff Crypto Laws
By Declan McCullagh ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
1:45 p.m. Sep. 13, 2001 PDT

WASHINGTON -- The encryption wars have begun.

For nearly a decade, privacy mavens have been worrying that a
terrorist attack could prompt Congress to ban
communications-scrambling products that frustrate both police wiretaps
and U.S. intelligence agencies.

Tuesday's catastrophe, which shed more blood on American soil than any
event since the Civil War, appears to have started that process.

Some politicians and defense hawks are warning that extremists such as
Osama bin Laden, who U.S. officials say is a crypto-aficionado and the
top suspect in Tuesday's attacks, enjoy unfettered access to
privacy-protecting software and hardware that render their
communications unintelligible to eavesdroppers.

In a floor speech on Thursday, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire)
called for a global prohibition on encryption products without
backdoors for government surveillance.

"This is something that we need international cooperation on and we
need to have movement on in order to get the information that allows
us to anticipate and prevent what occurred in New York and in
Washington," Gregg said, according to a copy of his remarks that an
aide provided.

President Clinton appointed an ambassador-rank official, David Aaron,
to try this approach, but eventually the administration abandoned the
project.

Gregg said encryption makers "have as much at risk as we have at risk
as a nation, and they should understand that as a matter of
citizenship, they have an obligation" to include decryption methods
for government agents. Gregg, who previously headed the appropriations
committee overseeing the Justice Department, said that such access
would only take place with "court oversight."

[...]

Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, a hawkish think tank
that has won accolades from all recent Republican presidents, says
that this week's terrorist attacks demonstrate the government must be
able to penetrate communications it intercepts.

"I'm certainly of the view that we need to let the U.S. government
have access to encrypted material under appropriate circumstances and
regulations," says Gaffney, an assistant secretary of defense under
President Reagan.

[...]



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Re: CNN Using 1991 Footage of Celebrating Palestinians?

[Adam Shostack]

On Thu, Sep 13, 2001 at 01:46:16PM -0700, lizard wrote:
| Matthew Gaylor wrote:
| > 
| > CNN Using 1991 Footage of Celebrating Palestinians
| > 
| > Can anyone verify this?
| > 
| > http://www.indymedia.org.il/imc/israel/webcast/display.php3?article_id=6946
| > 
| Reading through the following comments, it seems unlikely. Possible, but
| unlikely. The evidence, at this point, consists of an obviously anti-US
| poster referring to an unnamed Professor with an unseen tape. That's
| pretty low on the rely-o-meter.
| 
| I won't say it's impossible, but I want a better source.

>From Cyberia:

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_2.html
 
Palestinian Authority threatens camera crews covering celebrations

Special to World Tribune.com
MIDDLE EAST NEWSLINE
Thursday, September 13, 2001
RAMALLAH ? 

The Palestinian Authority has muzzled coverage of Palestinian
celebrations of the Islamic suicide attacks against the United States [...]



-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
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DES cracked by teenagers? (fwd)

[Jim Choate]

-- Forwarded message --
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 16:32:13 -0400
From: Steve Bellovin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: DES cracked by teenagers?

According to 
http://www.hk-imail.com/inews/public/article_v.cfm?articleid=28867&intcatid=1,
some teenagers "reportedly cracked an encryption technology called Data
Encryption Standard (DES)".  I'm skeptical, but I thought I'd toss it 
out.  Anyone have any details?

--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb
  http://www.wilyhacker.com





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Investigators Identify 50 Terrorists Tied to Plot

[Jim Choate]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-091301terror.story
-- 

 --


natsugusa ya...tsuwamonodomo ga...yume no ato
summer grass...those mighty warriors'...dream-tracks

Matsuo Basho

   The Armadillo Group   ,::;::-.  James Choate
   Austin, Tx   /:'/ ``::>/|/  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
   www.ssz.com.',  `/( e\  512-451-7087
   -~~mm-'`-```-mm --'-

Re: New FAA measures likely to fail as well

[jamesd]

--
On 12 Sep 2001, at 19:24, Steve Schear wrote:
> The knife ban won't work against anyone with even a smidgen of
> metal detector knowledge.  Anyone can purchase a razor sharp
> ceramic knife like this one 
> http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:Rd6ExOvaDz8:www.smarthome.
> com/9126.html+ceramic+knife&hl=en

Better still, this lovely little ceramic knife 
http://www.argussupply.com/images/boker-2040.gif is street legal
in California.  Get one now!

The only solution is to do what many other nations have
successfully done.  Arm the crew and tell them to stop any
hijacking by whatever means it takes.

Against a disarmed crew under orders to cooperate, any weapon
will be sufficient.  Against an armed crew under orders to die
fighting, no weapon will be sufficient. 

--digsig
 James A. Donald
 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
 wbTKherEmEkb7WrFXVL2SLrBZcFURSqr2WfMfva7
 4fHjwEeylrHZNSzsvNFE7AN0q3lxb6O8lmg9JtZ2b