At 6:31 PM -0800 3/4/00, John Young wrote:
>No, I had not read the early archives, at the time I got on
>board there was plenty going on to electrify 6 inches of callus
>off my near-dead carcass. Then, later, the early stuff disappeared
>with Bilblio, when I had assumed it would be around whenever
>needed. And, then the Cyphernomicon was a ready reference.
>
>To read the stuff now is again electrifying. And I wanted to
>make the point that some bright DoJ or legislative researcher is
>going to run across it while searching for new enemies of the state,
>a conspiratorial bunch of them, and lo, looky here.
>
>And you got to admit that it's weird that none of the early
>cypherpunks have been caught at, or accused, of sedition.
>Or even set up like Mitnick for high-profile prosecution.
Well, the Feds floated out a report to various law enforcement offices and
judge sites that yours truly, me, was making plans to kill a federal judge.
This was a lie, but it didn't stop the U.S. Marshal's Service, FBI, and
other agencies from spreading this lie.
(My neighbors also reported to me that while I was gone one day a
helicopter--color was not noted--spent some time hovering at the same level
as my house, about 200 yards off my ridge. My nearest neighbor told me he
saw large cameras aimed directly at my house. IR cameras? Simple checking
for land slippage? Who knows? Certain members of this list had great fun
with my simple report of this...one reason I despise them so much.)
I was also ordered to leave Stanford University by a passal of
threatening-looking cops, for the sin of not letting them inspect my bag
when I was on campus around the time Reichsfuhrergruppenleder Klinton and
his wife and daughter were about to arrive. They accused me of planting a
bomb in the Meyer Library, but I think this was just an accusation made to
rattle me. No connection with Cypherpunks, though.
(Then there was the time the Office of Naval Intelligence had me yanked out
of my 9th grade class in 1967, but that was physics-related, not
crypto-related.)
As for what they could do to me, short of planting evidence of some crime,
or trying to bust me because of bomb-making information or dope-growing
information on my computers--a classic fishing expedition if ever there
were one--there just ain't much they can do.
Sure, I strongly advocate using cryptography to usher in, eventually, an
era of new freedoms. And I cherish the thought that hundreds of thousands
of government criminals will someday be dealt with in trials and then
hanged or shot or simply gassed. I even think it would be really, really
cool for major snake dens like D.C. to be wiped out by freedom fighters.
None of these views are prosecutable. It would be delightful were they to
try. Unlike the prosecution of Debs for sedition circa 1920, this is 2000,
not 80 years ago. Mere speech is only criminal if it insults "persons of
queerness," negroes, or other persons in special protected political
classes.
As for other early list contributors, John Gilmore has been caught up in
various issues. He can speak for himself. I'll just note that his high
visibility works to his benefit the same way my very visible position works
for me.
Ditto for others. If we are ever busted for merely giving our views and for
helping to push certain technologies--absent actually violating export laws
in a visible way--then there are likely to be many journalists who follow
the case.
(Also, who's to say some of us haven't made arrangements to have those who
unjustly prosecute us blown up, along with their wives and children?
Stranger things have happened.)
The two main prosecutions of list members are familiar to us all (except
the newbies, who mostly don't count). Jim Bell and that singer songwriter
from Texas who went by many names. Their failings were to cross the line
into taking _specific_ actions, either deploying stinky chemicals and
passing sentence on specific federal judge or building semi-realistic-bombs
and leaving them in bus or train stations and then also sending death
threats to Bill Gates.
I'm careful to avoid doing such stupidities. No one person has ever been
threatened by me...the closest, perhaps, I've ever come (at least that I
recall, not counting throwaway insults of obnoxious list members) is to
mention the well-known, in some circles, price on the head of Lon Horiuchi,
the Ruby Ridge assassin.
In fact, I make it a point not to know the names of any federal judges,
just so I'll never slilp into the catch-all of "threatening a federal
judge." (They seem to treat threats, even casual, political ones, against
judges as more serious than threats against Louis Freeh or Janet Reno.
Judges are cuddly, I guess, and they figure they can get convictions from
other judges more easily. Best to _never_ know the names of any specific
judges. And certainly not to "try them in absentia," as Bell and some of
his friends did with a Portland judge. The law doesn't seem to treat this
as protected political speech.)
>Phil Zimmermann's long-running case, and those of Bernstein
>and Karn (before Junger) may have helped divert attention
>from the cypherpunks open advocacy of subversion. Or was
>it that the cypherpunks chose not to break the law, or not in
>detectable ways.
Our early deployment of remailers was certainly more "seditious" than the
activities of some, especially as we made no bones about the motive for
deploying remailers widely.
But the State, at least in America, has no means of prosecuting such
deployments or advocacay. Remailers are just a form of speech. (Some have
characterized them as "attractive nuisances," but this is a civil matter.
Not yet tested.)
The most seditious--in the general sense, not the Sedition Law sense--thing
I think I ever posted was Blacknet. And the means of using "digital dead
drops."
But they can't prosecute me for generating and publicizing ideas like this,
not if they don't prosecute Ludlum for devising and publicizing, Clancy
for revealing, Bamford for exposing. (Though I hear that some in the NSA
wanted to prosecute Bamford.)
Like it or not, speech is still free. I am confident that they cannot
prosecute me, even though I think it's clear that what I and Eric and Hugh
and Hal and Lance and others have done is far more dangerous to their power
than the "social engineering" Mitnick is alleged to have done ever was.
>Could be that the list was so technologically and politically
>informative that it was wise heads who ordered; let it run, cut
>these wizards some slack, this is producing superb intel for
>easy archiving. And, lo, looky here, Tim May has made us a
>handy data mine pointer.
>
>Now, is it tickling the tiger's tail to wonder who's being looked
>at to kick off a cyber demonizing agenda for the '00s?
>
>Two reports may provide clues, one is testimony of the CIA
>on February 23 on "Cyber Threats and the U.S. Economy:"
>
> http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/cyberthreats_022300.html
>
Yeah, but these revelations, just like those about Echelon, are "old beer
in new bottles." Freeh and Tenet and Reno babbling on about remailers,
money laundering, data havens...all predictable, all seen before.
Freeh and others were making similar claims during the Clipper fiasco,
which happened during the first year of the Cypherpunks' existence.
(It was at the April 1993 Cypherpunks physical meeting where we figured out
our counterattack on Clipper. And vicious it was. That's where I stood up
and drew an Intel-type swoosh on the whiteboard with "Big Brother Inside."
Matt Townsend, then a list member, made a GIF of it. Someone else had some
stickers printed up. They later turned up as I hoped they would, attached
surreptitiously to Clipperphones and Shimomura Sniffers. I'm kidding about
the last, as anyone deploying those sniffers would not see the humor in the
Big Brother Inside stickers. By the way, future billionaire Jim Bidzos was
in on that meeting. What a trip.)
Fact is, I knew these technologies would change the world--eventually--when
I read Chaum's papers in 1987-88. I went to the Crypto '88 conference and
talked to Chaum. He said I had drawn the correct conclusions (and even
agreed that my scheme for mail forwarders would work, as he referred me to
his '81 paper on "Untraceable E-Mail.")
I dashed off my "Crypto Anarchist Manifesto," as a kind of joking riff on
Marx, just before that conference. The implications were crystal clear.
In the early days of the list, circa 1992-3, these ideas were not as
obvious to many as they are now. (Actually, in the past several months
we've had a new crop of folks to whom even the ideas of free markets are
alien. I would say there's a lot of work to do, except that there's no
point wasting time with those who natter on about how communism could
rilly, rilly work if ever it were given a fair chance.)
Do they plan to raid my home? They like soft targets. Unemployed nerds who
live with their parents. I can afford the very best lawyers in the world.
And there's always the chance I'll choose to use of my FALs and HK91s and
chemicals to take a few dozen of them out before they get to me. I'm not
claiming I _rationally plan_ to do this, just that the adrenaline response
in me is often very, very sharp. I can get so angry in a matter of 10
seconds that blowing up their administrative building seems to be the right
thing to do. Seeing burning bodies of my enemies, and their children, seems
delightful.
This is not a threat..just a statement of my psychological outlook. (I
always lie about my mental state when I buy rifles and handguns...there is
nothing in the Second Amendment that says I must psychoanalyze myself as to
my state.)
Anyway, those who read the early years of the list may better understand
why so much of the traffic in the past few years, especially the boring
stuff about new simple encryption corporate offerings, is so stultifyingly
boring. Who the hell _cares_ that Digital Reality is releasing version 1.1
of Digomatic Encryption. What's exciting are the real building blocks of
crypto anarchy.
(And, please, don't any of you gibber about how I should be spending some
of my money funding startups. Fact is, I'm here in the Bay Area, which
means I would be likely to see any groups working on an actual product
which could be funded with modest means. The startups that succeeded did so
with sweat equity and "self-funding." (C2Net was self-funding by starting
small, and Sameer never sought money from anyone that I know of. Anonymizer
also started small. The big crypto companies started up with vastly greater
resources--Verisign, XCert, etc. Not something I could have funded anyway.
Any business plan which calls for umpteen millions to be raised so a bunch
of folks can sit around and work on a plan is probably doomed--I saw this
with a couple of well-known startups in the late 80s. I have never seen a
proposal which actually needed _modest_ amounts of money; at least not one
proposed by any Cypherpunks of my acquaintance. Not counting nebulous
proposals to buy patent portfolios. Let me tell you, it is not interesting
to me to sell, for example $10 million worth of stock so as to have the $6
million leftover to buy the Chaum patents. I made it clear to Cypherpunks
that I have little interest in charity, especially not at this level.)
Enough for now. More of you should read the early years of the list. I
thought they were readily available...I used such archives when I was
working on my Cyphernomicon. And I recall someone was advertising a CD-ROM
of list traffic.
Later,
--Tim May
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
"Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
