Re: NATIONAL SECURITY PORN RISK

> Does anyone on the Cypherpunks Channel have any inside information about
> the "computer porn ring" that was busted at Lawrence Livermore Labs?  Is
> there a crypto tie-in?

From the meager facts in the front page article in the San Jose Mercury
News, this whole thing could be as simple as an employee archiving two
gigabytes of alt.binaries.pictures.erotica on an unused disk volume and
setting up a passworded account for people who knew about it to ftp them.
Nobody can put that kind of stuff on an anonymous ftp site because the
traffic volume grows too high, and I would expect that such stuff is
against LLL policy, so anyone who wanted to provide an archive site would
have to only tell a few people who would tell a few people who ... and
eventually a reporter for the LA Times thought that he had discovered a
scoop.

The real news here is that the major daily newspaper in Silicon Valley
could print a front page story which goes from talking about an LLL
employee who was archiving erotic pictures to talking about software piracy
on BBS's and the internet to referring to the people who ftp'd the pictures
as "pirates" and lumping the pictures and the software together as
"illegal" material and then raising some vague issues of national security
by quoting an "anonymous computer expert" as saying that people could have
used the pictures to transmit secret information (with nothing to indicate
that there was any reason to think that anyone did). If the article had
been printed in the National Enquirer it would be funny. In the mainstream
press I find it frightening. Especially coming at the same time as reports
of Clinton's support of a national data/id card and our governor's
volunteering of my privacy to beta test it.

Is it time to move out of here? Does anyone have any suggestions of
countries where things are better, not likely to get much worse as the U.S.
decides to spread its brand of "democracy" even more universally, and which
have not closed their doors to refugees from America?

 -- sidney markowitz <sidney@apple.com>
    [In a pretty down mood at the moment]

Citizen-Unit Markowitz wrote this without permission:

> Is it time to move out of here? Does anyone have any suggestions of
> countries where things are better, not likely to get much worse as the U.S.
> decides to spread its brand of "democracy" even more universally, and which
> have not closed their doors to refugees from America?
> 
>  -- sidney markowitz <sidney@apple.com>
>     [In a pretty down mood at the moment]

Citizen-Unit Markowitz is hereby advised that his permission to exit
is being revoked. The New World Order mandates the widespread
deployment of DigiCash (TM--U.S. Department of Justice); your digital
account can then be cancelled upon receipt of Identity Revocation
Orders.

We shall triumph. It shall be a shining era of golden harmony and
meticulous order, mediated by the glistening bits of the digiverse.
All things in their places, and all actions for the good of the State.


--Kryptoreichkanzler Klaus! von Future Prime


-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Kryptoreichkanzler Klaus despairs of a Citizen-Unit's lament:

> We shall triumph. It shall be a shining era of golden harmony and
> meticulous order, mediated by the glistening bits of the digiverse.
> All things in their places, and all actions for the good of the State.

If we wait long enough, things will be at least entertaining.

"Failure to be properly sedated may result in prosecution for criminal
drug avoidance."
        -- The omnipresent public address system in THX-1138, a movie
           which has been sadly overlooked in the modern Search for
           Dystopia.

(bonus quatloo to the person who can remind me what the Freud-in-a-box
was called... the one that said "Could you be more... specific?")

{now back to your regularly scheduled list; sorry for the digression}
- -- 
Roy M. Silvernail  []  roy@sendai.cybrspc.mn.org

                          It's just this little chromium switch.......

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