ULotD? Cuban Tattoos.

A bit o'apocrypha for a Monday evening...

Cheers,
Bob
--- begin forwarded text


Resent-Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 11:27:25 -0500
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To: 0xdeadbeef@substance.abuse.blackdown.org
Cc: bostic@bsdi.com
Subject: ULotD? Cuban Tattoos.
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 10:14:12 -0500
From: glen mccready <glen@qnx.com>
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Forwarded-by: Arunas Norvaisa <arunas@witty.com>

There was a guy in Florida, Cuban by nationality, who had been unable to
get US citizenship and was due to be deported. A couple of MIT students,
who had heard about this guy and were after a lark, hopped a plane down to
Florida and took this guy to a tatoo studio. What they tatooed on to him
was the DES algorithm, in some computer readable form. Thus rendering the
guy unexportable. The US government offered to scrape the tatoos off, but
they guy's lawyers screamed something about human rights abuses.  The way I
heard it, the guy was eventually granted citizenship.

--- end forwarded text



-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/
Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/>

At 2:08 PM -0800 1/27/98, Robert Hettinga wrote:
>A bit o'apocrypha for a Monday evening...

>Forwarded-by: Arunas Norvaisa <arunas@witty.com>
>
>There was a guy in Florida, Cuban by nationality, who had been unable to
>get US citizenship and was due to be deported. A couple of MIT students,
>who had heard about this guy and were after a lark, hopped a plane down to
>Florida and took this guy to a tatoo studio. What they tatooed on to him
>was the DES algorithm, in some computer readable form. Thus rendering the
>guy unexportable. The US government offered to scrape the tatoos off, but
>they guy's lawyers screamed something about human rights abuses.  The way I
>heard it, the guy was eventually granted citizenship.

Utter bullshit.

Extraordinary jokes require extraordinary proof.

--Tim May

The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^2,976,221   | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

At 11:21 PM 1/27/98 -0500, Robert Hettinga wrote:
>At 9:58 pm -0500 on 1/27/98, Tim May wrote:
>> Utter bullshit.
>Agreed. On several levels of reference, I think...

Well of course it was!  But a well-crafted urban legend,
with enough truth and enough deliberate bogosity to be worthwhile.

				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF  3C85 B884 0ABE 4639

At 9:58 pm -0500 on 1/27/98, Tim May wrote:


> Utter bullshit.

Agreed. On several levels of reference, I think...

> Extraordinary jokes require extraordinary proof.

Indeed. Hence my use of the word "apocrypha" to introduce it. And the
OxDEADBEEF list moderator's use of "ULotD", for, it seems, "Urban Legend of
the Day".

Note Perry Metzger's follow-on, which I also forwarded at the same time.
(You remember Perry, right? He liked to talk about cryptography here
once... Yeah, Tim, I know. You *knew* Perry Metzger, and, frankly, Mr.
Hettinga, yada, yada, yada)

<he said, ducking the usual .50 cal teleoperated sniper fire>

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga

-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/
Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/>