- cypherpunks-legacy@lists.ogf.org

Re: positive rep
by yanek＠novavax.nova.edu 19 Dec '92

19 Dec '92

> but how do you know who to add to the positive rep list? take netnews, > e.g. i generally scan a group for names i know (+ rep), then read For example, all mail/news reader software would have a function where after reading the article you could press a key to indicate you found the article useful/informative/interesting. What it would do is send the person a "certificate", which in essence says "I recommend reading messages by this person", signed cryptographically with your signature. These certificates could be appended to messages by that person, or posted to some special newsgroup just for that purpose (similar to "control"), or distributed through some other means. If several people to whom you have assigned high credibility recommend messages by a person, then your news software would automatically sort his messages to appear higher in the list before other people's messages, and also that person's recommendations would have a higher weight in computing other people's sort values. All this pre-supposes widespread use of authenticated messages, so someone could not forge himself some certificates from well-known people. Also, it would not allow a J. Random to forge a post that appears to be from a person with high reputation. The technology for such communication exists now (PGP, MD5, RSAREF, etc) it is just not integrated into most news/mail software. Unlike negative reputations, positive reputations are immune to subversion by creating many anonymous or pseudonymous identities. You might imagine someone creating two hundred "people" and have them all send him their "certificates". But this would not work, since no-one has recommended these people, their certificate would carry no weight whatsoever. -- Yanek Martinson mthvax.cs.miami.edu!safe0!yanek uunet!medexam!yanek this address preferred -->> yanek(a)novavax.nova.edu <<-- this address preferred Phone (305) 765-6300 daytime FAX: (305) 765-6708 1321 N 65 Way/Hollywood (305) 963-1931 evenings (305) 981-9812 Florida, 33024-5819

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Remailer Policies
by edgar＠spectrx.Saigon.COM 19 Dec '92

19 Dec '92

I would like to expand on Hal's suggestion that remailer operators post their policies on a)keeping logs and b) divulging same. Hal says he keeps logs "for a few days" and might divulge logs of "really vicious, racially or sexually harrassing" messages. Presumably this would also cover anonymous threatening messages, blackmail, etc. We've already discussed use of PGP by pedophiles to encrypt incriminating diaries. It gets better. PGP and remailers can be used to encrypt and ship "kiddy porn" GIF files. Even private possession of such material is a serious crime in the USA. A chain of anonymous and encrypted remailers could be used to drop kiddy porn into newsgroups like alt.sex.pictures I'm sure that would create quite a stir! Perhaps Duncan or another attorney would like to comment on legal liability of remailers in these kinds of situations. I don't think there's currently any law on what records remailers would have to keep; if you didn't have them, you couldn't give them up. If this becomes a problem, expect legislation regulating or even outright banning remailers. However, if remailer code has spread over many national boundaries, such legislation may not be effective. By the way, no-one has yet responded to my request to add features to Eric's remailer to 1)remove the "sig" after "--" and 2)Anonymously post to newsgroups available at the remailer site. Both these features are present in the Australian remailer at Pax. Unfortunately that remailer seems less secure than Eric's in that it keeps more or less permanent records of its users at the remailer site and it doesn't seem to be able to chain to other remailers. -- edgar(a)spectrx.saigon.com (Edgar W. Swank) SPECTROX SYSTEMS +1.408.252.1005 Silicon Valley, Ca

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positive reps and paranoia
by deboni＠diego.llnl.gov 19 Dec '92

19 Dec '92

I'm just a lurker on this list, trying to pick up on what's happening in this subset of computing and communications, but my chain's been yanked, and the subject merits a reply. On the matter of the discussion that's been going on vis-a-vis reputations versus kill files, I'm afraid we're regressing to the bad old days when everyone was considered bad and worthy of suspicion until they demonstrated that they were good and trustworthy. I'd personally rather believe people are basically good than otherwise. Even if I must occasionally suffer getting burned, it's easier on the nerves, attitude, and karma to assume the best in those I interact with. I think it's significant that there are really so few of us on the net who are actually insufferable and refuse to be shouted down to reasonable behavior by the civil rest of us. Those few who are will not be prevented from troubling us by the measures being advocated - positive reps, scores on 1-to-10 scales, etc. - any more than weapon makers are deterred by manufacturers of armor. someone who really wanted to could still flood our group with vitriol, using multiple artificial identities vouched for by other artificial identities. If such neurotic vengeful behavior were really likely on the net, we'd have seen it already. What, other than good sense and a low threshold of boredom, prevents any of us from flooding any and all news groups with garbage? And if it ever becomes a problem, we'll just have to appoint a moderator, perhaps on a rotating basis, from among those of us who are personally acquainted with each other. My point here isn't that we shouldn't prepare for the worst, but that we shouldn't get crazy about it. The theoretical aspects of the discussion are interesting to me, but I just thought it was getting a little close to the edge not to comment. Tom DeBoni (Once I figure this stuff all out, I'll get a "protected" identity, too.) deboni(a)llnl.gov

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reputations
by tribble＠xanadu.com 19 Dec '92

19 Dec '92

Since I have a reputation for talking about reputations.... You are already engaged in a positive reputation system. Which email lists are you on? Which newsGroups do you bother with? what TV shows do you watch? New instances of all of these pop up and succeed all the time. Negative reputation systems work very poorly. Right now I receive cypherpunks. I used to receive Extropians (and will do so again soon). The volume can get horrific at times. Consider all the stuff that I'm not receiving (that I filtered out). I don't see sci.nanotech, sci.crypt, alt.pgp (?), libernet, alt.politics, alt.sex.bondage, etc. because I haven't the bandwidth. Ah, but if I could pick and choose among the entire available feed rather than ignoring most of it just so I have a hope of filtering down to a manageable mail load.... That's what positive filters are for. There are lots of gems buried in the crap of net-news (and remember that my gems may be your crap), and I want a system that will find them for me. I think the approach of reputation filtered mailing lists is a bad one. That reputation filtering process is simply a poor mechanism to avail us all of the moderator's taste in email. If we had a better mechanism, then such a list is just alt.extropy or sci.crypt where things are prioritized (using the positive prioritixing information of such people who would otherwise be moderators) such that I see the good stuff and ignore the bozoz (whomever they are). Or in the more likely case, I just see the creme de la creme of the good stuff because that's all I have time for. In such a system, one can think of a magazine as simply purchasing the editor's priority information. Paul Baclace built a genetic algorithm thing that would present netnews from all groups in prioritized order. As you gave it feedback on how glad you were to receive each message, it didi pattern matching on features of the messages to make better sorters. This ends up correlating author (anonymous or otherwise), subjet, topic, reply chain, time of day, whatever seems relevant into the prioritization of mail. If those weight could be spread, combined with manually entered filters ("I'm tired of politics..."), etc. you might actually be able to spend less time on email/news getting more value from it. dean

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reputations talk notes
by tribble＠xanadu.com 19 Dec '92

19 Dec '92

These are the notes from my talk at the last meeting. They may only be parsable by people who saw the talk, but I'm interested in all comments. Thanks to Mark Miller and Eric Drexler who helped me put together these notes the first time. The need for reputations: single Prisoner's Dilemna incentive for defecting iterated Prisoner's dilemna incentive for cooperating reps put each person in an iterated situation with the group better reputations reduce reputation float (see below) Spreading reputations makes them better at encouraging cooperation Uses of reputations: sorting filtering - this is just bad sorting collateral - for business and important trust issues let me add that reputation appication is largely on the receiving side Negative reputations: don't work with anonymity because you just make another identity don't spread for psychological and legal reasons many people won't reveal negative opinions about others people primarily support filtering and collateral Positive reputations: are safer to reveal and spread allow sorting can handle anonymous pseudonyms Anonymity: reduces perceived and actual accountability breaks many of our trained intutions for trusting others implicit but unrevealed assets aren't at risk trade names are examples of non-anon. pseudonyms Reputations systems for sorting mail are less of an issues than reputations systems for actual business because there is less at risk. Gaming of a reputation system depends on how much is at risk. Brilliant Pennies: randomly generated reputations the con game: start with 1000 pennies flip them every day. head the stock market goes up, tails it goes down throw out pennies that 'guessed' wrong at the end of ten days you have a penny with a 'reputation' for predicting the stock market sell the penny anonymously :-) inconsistent positive reputations are better than perfect reputations can explain away first several mistakes Assets that support an identity recoverable assets anything that can be recovered in the even of a defection bank accounts, goods, factories, etc. pseudonyms typically won't have recoverable assets pseudonyms could keep recoverable assets in a non-anonymous escrow can be anonymously and privately committed to more than one party in the event of a defection, so value can't properly be assessed unrecoverable assets Sunk costs time, money spent building a reputation solves the Brilliant Penny problem: random rep requires huge investment a 30day coin-flipping rep requires more pennies than exist notarized money-destruction service: proves investment with no route for kickbacks to the investor demonstrates the comparative cost of running an anon. service our intuitions about sunk costs can be very wrong here we're used to sunk costs at least looking recoverable (liquidation) we're used to eventual personal accountability of decision maker sunk costs enable kill files again you can only afford so many pseudonyms this is relates to the Brilliant Penny solution reputation capital (perceived value of reputation) customer good will, market share, shelf space, customer mind-space, etc. priority settings in receivers's mail handlers (filters, sorters) future sales potential based on the net present value of the reputation perceived differently by different individuals (customers/producer) based on discount rate (subjective value of money now vs. money later?) perception of discount rate can change radically you are told you have 6 months to live Reputation Float: latency between use of a reputation and the effect on the value of the reputation how long can you ride on past glory? this includes the amount of goods, etc. against which the reputation is collateral existing trade-names collateralize the quality of existing goods (i.e. cars) estimating reputation float is a public goods problem why should I reveal the goods I have outstanding if I can get the info anyway insurance (Idea Futures) doesn't help the anonymous could collect both from defaulting and from insurance our intuitions screw up at estimating this we're not used to untraceable transactions Miscellaneous: filtering/sorting reputations should be wrt to topics This generalizes to other criteria individuals have different levels of expertise in different areas synthesized reputations are reputations composed from multiple reputations chaining remailers composes their reputations for security voting among key providers composes their uncompromisability reputations

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Re: The Need for Positive Repuations
by jthomas＠kolanut.mitre.org 18 Dec '92

18 Dec '92

> From: tcmay(a)netcom.com (Timothy C. May) > The longterm solution is to use "positive reputations" and not just > "negative reputations" (as in Kill files). This is something Dean > Tribble just talked about at our last physical meeting of the > Cypherpunks ("Bay Area Branch" :-} ). > > Think of like a credit rating. People _earn_ trust, they don't just > get assigned a credit rating until they do something bad. >From: pmetzger(a)shearson.com (Perry E. Metzger) >Indeed, in the long run, when there are billions of people in the >nets, even UseNet newsgroups devoted to people who use musical >instruments as sex toys would have thousands of posts a day because >given billions of possible subscribers, finding a few tens of >thousands with a particularly obscure interest wouldn't be hard. >Thus, in the long run, the nets will move to "closed" newsgroups and >mailing lists in which to be a subscriber one will have to be >explicitly subscribed to a list and will only be able to read with >one's private key and post by digitally signing messages. In such >an environment, anonymous abusers will simply be incapable of >annoying people. Yes, but there will still need to be a way for new people to join the lists, (and the net in general) before they've had a chance to "prove themselves." Allowing all new id's to post to the whole group on a probationary basis is unacceptable; as soon as someone proves obnoxious enough to kick off they could just start over with a new id. The obvious answer is that a moderator will be necessary for all closed lists that require a positive rep for posting and that don't wish to be forever limited to their founding members. After a few lucid posts passed by the moderator, an individual would gain enough of a reputation not to be filtered out any longer. Of course, anyone who's heard Howard Stern fans invade political call-in shows will realize there's not much that can be done with those weird people who will spend a lot of time and energy to appear credible, only to annoy people. Joe

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Patently false rumor
by 2FTPHAVOC＠kuhub.cc.ukans.edu 18 Dec '92

18 Dec '92

I just finished reading the Mondo 2k article on cypherpunks. I was hoping to find out some more info on !encrytption software. All rumors are built on a grain of truth, aren't they?

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The Wheel
by wendtj＠jplpost.Jpl.Nasa.Gov 18 Dec '92

18 Dec '92

Has anyone built there own TEMPEST reciever/antenna equipment? I have seen articles that say that you can use old television sets, and that you can build more advanced TEMPEST unit for a hundred dollars. This seems akin to the carburator that will give you 200 mpg, and plans for a particle beam cannon in the back of some zines. If this is so cheap and easy or cheaper-quicker-better (NASA-Goldin-TQM propoganda), then why haven't we seen an article/articles on the construction of a TEMPEST reciever and the associated tuning/specs on such an item. Is it possible, or nothing more than snake oil? JPW

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Returned mail: User unknown
by MAILER-DAEMON＠acf3.NYU.EDU 18 Dec '92

18 Dec '92

----- Transcript of session follows ----- >>> RCPT To:<cyperpunks(a)toad.com> <<< 550 <cyperpunks(a)toad.com>... User unknown 550 cyperpunks(a)toad.com... User unknown ----- Unsent message follows ----- Received: by acf3.NYU.EDU (5.61/1.34) id AA06619; Thu, 17 Dec 92 21:23:18 -0500 From: habs (Harry A. B. Shapiro) Message-Id: <9212180223.AA06619(a)acf3.NYU.EDU> Subject: repeater abuse To: cyperpunks(a)toad.com Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 21:23:17 -0500 (EST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL0] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Length: 544 In reponse to Dean T. message. I agree. Re: low tech - The extropians uses several Perry(TM) filters to prevent unwanted bounces AND unwanted posters OUT. For a more high tech solution I can imagine some sort of public or private key needed to make a post - An example being some a public key that was in some manner signed by a trusted member of a list - I am weak on the techincal end/side but basically unless the message is "trusted" it doens't get through. -- habs(a)acf3.NYU.EDU habs(a)gnu.ai.mit.edu habs(a)well.sf.ca.us habs(a)panix.com

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Re: The Need for Positive Repuations
by pmetzger＠shearson.com 18 Dec '92

18 Dec '92

> From: tcmay(a)netcom.com (Timothy C. May) > The longterm solution is to use "positive reputations" and not just > "negative reputations" (as in Kill files). This is something Dean > Tribble just talked about at our last physical meeting of the > Cypherpunks ("Bay Area Branch" :-} ). > > Think of like a credit rating. People _earn_ trust, they don't just > get assigned a credit rating until they do something bad. Indeed, in the long run, when there are billions of people in the nets, even UseNet newsgroups devoted to people who use musical instruments as sex toys would have thousands of posts a day because given billions of possible subscribers, finding a few tens of thousands with a particularly obscure interest wouldn't be hard. Thus, in the long run, the nets will move to "closed" newsgroups and mailing lists in which to be a subscriber one will have to be explicitly subscribed to a list and will only be able to read with one's private key and post by digitally signing messages. In such an environment, anonymous abusers will simply be incapable of annoying people. A weak version of this exists already in the Extropians mailing list, which considers itself to be a closed list. The list is governed by a privately produced legal code (its in some ways a test of anarchocapitalist legal theory), and since the adoption of the code, we've had a reduction of flaming by a large factor even though we've seen a three fold increase in list size. The content is improving because people know that sanctions will be applied for flaming and that they can actually be kicked off the list, and that being kicked off is meaningful. In the long run, all serious discussion groups will likely evolve in this direction, with the lists being closed to explicit subscribers and with meaningful sanctions like ostracism being applied to people that behave in an antisocial manner. Such lists have little reason to fear people hiding behind cloaks of anonymity. With digital signatures, even the anonymous can develop meaningful reputations and can be sanctioned for failing to live up to those reputations. Perry

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