From: aba@dcs.exeter.ac.uk
Date: Tue, 25 Jul 95 12:37:47 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: ANNOUNCE: Regulatory Arbitrage - Free Speech Server
Message-ID: <1298.9507251936@exe.dcs.exeter.ac.uk>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



The Free Speech Server
----------------------

In an attempt to preempt senator Exon and his thought police, and to
demonstrate to such other utterly misguided, utterly clueless
net-illiterates who somehow get ahold of the notion that it is even
*possible* to censor peoples words and conversations on the Internet,
that what they seek is indeed impossible.

This is a simple demo of why it is impossible to censor the net.  The
Net is international, and in the apt words of Tim May's .sig quote:

  "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

The concept of "Regulatory Arbitrage" term meaning of course: shopping
for suitable regulations, so if the US has silly "indecency" laws,
well just store your words in another jurisdiction.


Free Speech Server, jurisdiction Netherlands
--------------------------------------------

Alex de Joode has kindly hosted an exon(tm) free speech server on
replay.com:

	http://www.replay.com/exon/

is an automated double-speak translator.  It will translate between
text in goverment approved thought policed language back into free
speech.

So, the canonical example, a comlaint against Senator Exon (spit),
Exonized(tm) so that even the most zealous US government internet
thought police could not complain:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Senator Exon may I express my annoyance you're a person who is
  overly sensitive to vulgar speech.  This has lowered my opinion of you
  considerably for your work on the communications decency bill.

  President Clinton and his crowd of law enforcement officials seem to
  be overly keen in their attempts to regulate the information super
  highway.  

  In my opinion they are just understandably scared of losing their much
  abused so called legitimate wiretap capabilities.  It seems highly
  inappropriate that incompetents like you should be deciding matters
  about which you have little knowledge.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Feed that into the WWW forms interface on www.replay.com (click on the
unexonize toggle button, and select the "exon" dictionary, and you get
back my original message to Exon, ahh much better this really says
what I had to say:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
  X-Regulatory-Arbitrage-URL: http://www.replay.com/exon/
  X-Authors-Preferred-Speech: exon
  X-Comment: Regulatory Arbitrage in action, free speech server NL


  Exon fuck you you're a prudish prick. May you rot in hell for your
  work on the government censorship bill.

  Slick Willy and his gang of jack booted thugs seem to be fucking
  falling over themselves in their attempts to censor the net.

  In my opinion they are just scared shitless of losing their illegal
  wiretaps. It seems fucking way out of order that assholes like you
  should be deciding matters about which you know squat.
----------------------------------------------------------------------


The mechanism used to do the translation is phrase replacement, there
are facilities for you to add your own phrases if the dictionaries do
not cover what you want to say.  Please join in and add your own
phrases, so that the dictionaries get more interesting.

It works by replacing phrases, so in the above:

'fuck you'                    <->   'may I express my annoyance'
'fucking way out of order'    <->   'highly inappropriate'
'know squat'		      <->   'have little knowledge'

etc.

Jurisdictional Information
--------------------------

The first server is located in the Netherlands, so there are liberal
pornography laws, lower age of consent, no thought crimes, freedom of
speech, and privacy are still valued, the are no restrictions on
"indecent speech", no restrictions on crypto export, etc, etc.

The idea is that in your own jurisdiction (US or other oppressive
regime with government censorship) you are only saying something
within the bounds of censored government speech and thought guidlines,
and yet you have a comment, which says what language you *would* use
if you weren't being censored, ie you inculde as a header, or a
comment in your post what your preferred speech is in terms of a
selection of "exon" dictionaries:

	X-Authors-Preferred-Speech: exon,legislese,sarcasm

You haven't actually *said* anything which would require 'correction'
by the thought police, rather you have just said what words you would
use if you were allowed to.

You could also view it as a form of (weak) text stego, saying one
thing, but meaning another to a sufficient extent to maintain
plausible deniability.

Uses
----

It is starting to look like the US will have in place a set of
regulations which will make it illegal to use "vulgar speech" or
"indecent speech" on the internet.  In fact it is looking like you
will be able to say less on the internet than could be written in a
book in a bookstore or library.

Whilst the above example was in terms of 4 letter words, there are
dictionaries for several topics, which you as user of the system you
can add phrase to for your amusement:

exon:      "fuck you"               <->    "may I express my annoyance"
sex:       "good fuck"              <->    "good sleep"
violence:  "kick the shit out of"   <->    "have a minor disagreement"
sarcasm:   "that prick Exon"        <->    "most honorable Sen Exon esq"
legislese: "pillage and loot"       <->    "govern"
legislese: "tyrannically suppress"  <->    "provide protections against"
graphic:   "lobotomised barney gif" <->    "we love barney"
crypto:    "fcrypt module"          <->    "conventional poetry quatrain"

The sky and your imagination is the limit.

Oh yes, and 'May I express my annoyance Senator Exon!' :-)

Adam
--
HAVE *YOU* EXPORTED RSA TODAY? --> http://dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/
--rsa--------------------------8<-------------------------------
#!/bin/perl -s-- -export-a-crypto-system-sig -RSA-3-lines-PERL
$m=unpack(H.$w,$m."\0"x$w),$_=`echo "16do$w 2+4Oi0$d*-^1[d2%Sa
2/d0<X+d*La1=z\U$n%0]SX$k"[$m*]\EszlXx++p|dc`,s/^.|\W//g,print
pack('H*',$_)while read(STDIN,$m,($w=2*$d-1+length($n)&~1)/2)
-------------------------------8<-------------------------------
TRY: rsa -k=3 -n=7537d365 < msg | rsa -d -k=4e243e33 -n=7537d365