Re: Undermining government power and authority
-- At 04:06 PM 5/4/2001 -0400, Faustine wrote: > When I've inadvertently offended people here, I've gone out of my > way to show some basic common courtesy and apologize, In most cases I found your "apologies" at least as offensive as your original insults, and frequently more so. > Since you're upset you're not thinking critically enough. Just as I said. > You have zero evidence to > support your interpretation. You have some kind of issue with me, and rather > than talking facts, are foaming at the mouth about my character, intelligence, > gender, and so on. How can anyone respect that as a real discussion. You are not capable of a real discussion. You do not know the facts, and you are not interested in finding them out. Nothing you have said makes me wish to have any kind of rational discourse with you. You are neither capable of it, nor interested in it. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 4baHRHhGxFGUI4fkWENAg2waNAr6T07z0rlLJclv 4cR54qyZkjD0mxbnh0FNHi/efsl6VeUznTO7iDwTO - We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ James A. Donald
Re: Undermining government power and authority
Quoting "James A. Donald" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > James Donald wrote: > > > So all of us are full bore paranoids? > > Faustine > >Is that really what you got out of what I said? > > Yes. You are so persistently catty and insulting that you could not > speak without a nasty meaning hidden in your words even if you were > discussing the weather. When I've inadvertently offended people here, I've gone out of my way to show some basic common courtesy and apologize, explaining what I meant--what else could I possibly do? "Nasty meaning hidden in my words"? It's all in your head, you couldn't be more wrong. If a reasonable person read my posts here, I don't think a single one of them would come away thinking I think "everyone here is a full-bore paranoid." Since you're upset you're not thinking critically enough. You have zero evidence to support your interpretation. You have some kind of issue with me, and rather than talking facts, are foaming at the mouth about my character, intelligence, gender, and so on. How can anyone respect that as a real discussion. It's embarassing. > > As for the rest of your message about what I've said or haven't said > > or the way I said it, people who read the posts will judge for > > themselves. > > Several people have already posted their judgments. Sure, there's no reason people can't talk about issues and disagree rationally without getting so thin-skinned they have to lose all sense of proportion and fly off the handle. I wonder how many people think you really accomplished anything wasting time attacking me. What's the point. > To paraphrase one of them: Fuck you, and fuck the dog that got your > mother pregnant. Well, at least you finally made yourself clear about your position re. the importance of not losing credibility with careless rhetoric and sloppy thinking. Use your filter file. ~Faustine.
Re: Undermining government power and authority
-- James Donald wrote: > > So all of us are full bore paranoids? Faustine >Is that really what you got out of what I said? Yes. You are so persistently catty and insulting that you could not speak without a nasty meaning hidden in your words even if you were discussing the weather. > As for the rest of your message about what I've said or haven't said > or the way I said it, people who read the posts will judge for > themselves. Several people have already posted their judgments. To paraphrase one of them: Fuck you, and fuck the dog that got your mother pregnant. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG ilmL1iqZm8jvZbOLlxeSwi/zcF1K5k3RcbnUv2D1 4V6DIn5KFl8NfWJpsSleKZU9ijXMCvi91P8rl4giE - We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ James A. Donald
Re: Undermining government power and authority
Faustine wrote: > Too true. But if we want to actually reach people who *would* care if only they > knew, it's important to talk about it without coming across like a full-bore > paranoid. It seems like a bad idea to risk losing credibility with careless > rhetoric and sloppy thinking. More than that, it's important to keep it > straight for your own sake. Sunder repiled: >There's only one proper response in the english language to your reply. >And that's simply this: Go Fuck Yourself. >Ok, fair enough, you want the long winded explanation. Here it is: >1. That's for saying I come across like a full-bore paranoid. >I wasn't speaking about you in particular AT ALL. I was making a general point >on a tangent related to the stream of conversation: I meant "you" as >in "one", "a person". Sorry you took it personally, I really didn't mean it >that way. James Donald wrote: >So all of us are full bore paranoids? Is that really what you got out of what I said? Why did you assume I was referring to everyone--or even anyone in particular--here? In fact, I was so far from assuming you or Sunder or anyone else was going to think I was referring to them personally I didn't even think it was necessary to reassure any of you with a disclaimer. Here and in the other threads too, you're assuming a lot of personal ill-will where it just didn't exist, which is really too bad. As for the rest of your message about what I've said or haven't said or the way I said it, people who read the posts will judge for themselves. But keeping in mind I never meant for you to take anything I said as a personal affront might make a difference to the way you come away from them. ~Faustine.
Re: Undermining government power and authority
At 09:21 PM 5/2/01 -0700, James A. Donald wrote: >-- >At 03:00 PM 5/1/2001 -0700, David Honig wrote: >> The sheeple can be shown arguments they understand, like: if you >> were , wouldn't you be motivated to > affront here>. This can alert them. > >Then they would promptly vote for a government commissar of privacy, to >check everyone's logs to make sure that everything that might violate >privacy was logged by trustworthy authorities. > >Since the average vote will make almost no difference, no one will bother >to think these things through merely for the sake of casting a sensible vote. There are *several* scenarios that you must communicate. That's why I used rather than simply naming the State as the evil actor. 1. Evil Corp or Boss is Watching You and They Plan To <...whatever annoys the *lefties* about business intel>, which provokes the whining about a need for govt czars, as you say. 2. Evil Relative or Ex-SO is Stalking You and .. 3. Evil (future, of course) Govt is looking to feed itself on more taxes, or getting more intrusive into citizen-monitoring, and govt czars are 'foot in the door' ---sorta like the FDA, which has got a reputation for causing more harm than good in some circles. "Once you give them the right to license you.. you are their slave" (I don't think 1. is a problem, but it is a prole motivator, and we're talking psyops here, not ethics.) One can hope. Or one can switch to disgust mode and pursue black nightmares: The Columbine Memorial Mandatory Web Logging & Access Act of 2002, "In order to provide safe schools, society needs to be able to review all page hits and ISP records to identify teens who view violent pages and have other obvious signs of impending Matrix-like behavior with firearms, whether in or out of school. Therefore, we require..."
Re: Undermining government power and authority
-- > > 1. That's for saying I come across like a full-bore paranoid. At 07:22 PM 4/30/2001 -0400, Faustine wrote: > I wasn't speaking about you in particular AT ALL. So all of us are full bore paranoids? Your catty insults, incessant put downs, and your patronizing flattery are equally worthless, for they are applied too indiscriminantly. In your ignorance of existing reputations, you insult the wrong people. Your insults reflect upon yourself, rather than those you would patronize. It is common on the internet to grant people with seemingly female names and a feminine writing style some extra slack, and the regulars on this list have displayed remarkable tolerance to your persistent nastiness. I too give extra slack to people who plausibly present as female, perhaps more than most males, but you have exhausted your supply of slack with me, and if you continue in this style you will rapidly exhaust it with everyone. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG nWFl54gJqOxeoykvur0DVhSWfZVa+aLraVLIildq 4dg3Lw5OtKcr1qYVeJYNwVO71VAgj3mvkND86r4DT - We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ James A. Donald
Re: Undermining government power and authority
-- At 03:00 PM 5/1/2001 -0700, David Honig wrote: > The sheeple can be shown arguments they understand, like: if you > were , wouldn't you be motivated to affront here>. This can alert them. Then they would promptly vote for a government commissar of privacy, to check everyone's logs to make sure that everything that might violate privacy was logged by trustworthy authorities. Since the average vote will make almost no difference, no one will bother to think these things through merely for the sake of casting a sensible vote. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 6GrEYw52OmIbdLwBJff1R0LmRHfDngaSkYrW9P9v 4ALGonVlFKGNHIyHYqfUAI0Ge3qbh9NXyVJMY8Fc7 - We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ James A. Donald
Re: Undermining government power and authority
At 05:01 PM 4/28/01 -0700, James A. Donald wrote: >> communicate something valuable about important issues. And calling >> people drones, sheep and idiots right off the bat doesn't exactly >> seem like a winning public relations strategy. > >The sheeple are not listening. They are not going to listen. So we can >call them anything we like. > The sheeple can be shown arguments they understand, like: if you were , wouldn't you be motivated to . This can alert them. Consider 'identity theft'. Convince them with tragic stories of folks losing control of their meatspace reputation [1] and they'll buy shredders. [1] and the economic benefits to the fraudster, thereby providing *motivation*.
Re: Undermining government power and authority
Faustine wrote: > > Too true. But if we want to actually reach people who *would* care if only they > knew, it's important to talk about it without coming across like a full-bore > paranoid. It seems like a bad idea to risk losing credibility with careless > rhetoric and sloppy thinking. More than that, it's important to keep it > straight for your own sake. >There's only one proper response in the english language to your reply. >And that's simply this: Go Fuck Yourself. >Ok, fair enough, you want the long winded explanation. Here it is: >1. That's for saying I come across like a full-bore paranoid. I wasn't speaking about you in particular AT ALL. I was making a general point on a tangent related to the stream of conversation: I meant "you" as in "one", "a person". Sorry you took it personally, I really didn't mean it that way. > Here you are >again implying your self-importance on this list over members who have been >here since its creation. Not at all. I thought it was a point worth making. I had no idea you'd think I was referring to you specifically. 2. You're assuming that I'm not "keeping it straight." No, I wasn't assuming anything about you. I was talking about an issue in the abstract, and don't see why a general point automatically ought to be construed as a personal insult. >"For my "sake?" How would you fucking know what's in my head? > How would you know what I think is true or isn't? Who the fuck asked you? I never said anything about you individually. I was speaking generally. Sorry this was so unclear. ~Faustine. 'We live in a century in which obscurity protects better than the law--and reassures more than innocence can.' Antoine Rivarol (1753-1801).
Re: Undermining government power and authority
-- At 06:38 PM 4/27/2001 -0400, Faustine wrote: > But if we want to actually reach people who *would* care if only > they knew, it's important to talk about it without coming across > like a full-bore paranoid. It seems like a bad idea to risk losing > credibility with careless rhetoric and sloppy thinking. More than > that, it's important to keep it straight for your own sake. > > The way I see it, you can either marginalize yourself with a "truth > versus the world" siege mentality, or you can try to actually > communicate something valuable about important issues. And calling > people drones, sheep and idiots right off the bat doesn't exactly > seem like a winning public relations strategy. The sheeple are not listening. They are not going to listen. So we can call them anything we like. It is a basic defect of democracy that government, the supposed answer to public good problems, is itself the gravest and most serious public good problem. It is rational to be ignorant of the issues, so most people are ignorant of anything needed to cast a competent vote, and ignorant they will remain. It is inherent in the nature of the state to grow and become more oppressive, until it reaches crisis and collapse. Even if people were rational and well informed on political issues, that would merely make the situation even worse, and bring about catastrophe and collapse even more rapidly. If people vote and organize in accord with their rational self interest, and they correctly perceive how the world does indeed work then the net result will be that lots of wealth will be redistributed, re-redistributed, and re-re-redistributed, with much of the wealth being lost in each re-re-re-re-distribution. On any one issue, it is always in the interests of a majority to vote for more government. It is in the interests of those running the government to erode the constitution, to make every aspect of life politically determined. It is not in the voters interests to be able to vote on what color toilet paper their neighbors use, but once the politicians have stealthily granted them that dangerous and unwanted power, they have little choice but to use it, if only in self defense, just as corporations have little choice but to bribe the politicians who have injected themselves and the public into the obscure administrivia of running a business. Once these limits have been eroded, it is immediately in the interest of any coalition of interest groups that can command 51% of the vote to vote to loot the other 49%, and to empower certain selected members of their coalition to run the day to day lives of the other 49% With these coalition shifting every few elections, pretty soon you have a situation where everyone is paying large subsidies to everyone else, with much of the money dissipated during the transfers, and a vast army of intrusive bureaucrats meddling in everyone's lives. Although the final outcome is not in anyone's interests, each step along the way, taken as a separate step, was clearly in the interests of a majority of the voters. The problem with public choice is that a series of measures, each of which is in the interests of the majority, can, and usually will, wind up being overwhelmingly against the interests of almost everyone. This problem is most conspicuously illustrated by various short lived African democracies where you could usually tell the losing current 49% by flames of burning villages and streams of blood running in the gutters. In short the problem is government itself. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 6EiJegphzkN76SqgS/hop5Wjk/Mm4P82KnF0NtoN 4gXzwPzm/ST15J8KFssq/2G34E1FuX9/tBb1xgSw0 - We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ James A. Donald
Re: Undermining government power and authority
Quoting Sunder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > John Young wrote: > > > > He added that the fact that gummed envelopes can be easily opened > > by intelligence agencies and law enforcement did not bother people. > > Sub rosa, implied: people with nothing to hide. > > I wonder how many of the sheeple actually are aware of this > capability. > I wonder how many of the sheeple would shudder if they realized it. > I wonder how many of the sheeple believe "naw, our government spy on > us, pshaw!" > I wonder how many of the sheeple believe "what me? I've nothing to > hide." > Baaa, baaa, baa... Too true. But if we want to actually reach people who *would* care if only they knew, it's important to talk about it without coming across like a full-bore paranoid. It seems like a bad idea to risk losing credibility with careless rhetoric and sloppy thinking. More than that, it's important to keep it straight for your own sake. The way I see it, you can either marginalize yourself with a "truth versus the world" siege mentality, or you can try to actually communicate something valuable about important issues. And calling people drones, sheep and idiots right off the bat doesn't exactly seem like a winning public relations strategy. Even if they mostly are, does it really hurt anything to keep it to yourself for awhile in the interests of finding an audience for your message? Is total candor really worth the price you pay in alienating otherwise sympathetic people? It's a tradeoff; something to consider at any rate. When trying to talk to people who basically trust the government to always do the right thing, maybe the first step to "waking them up" to goventmental abuse would be to point them to documents on abuse generated by the government itself: (the Church Committee, the Murphy Commission, the Gates hearings etc.) Even if you have every reason to think these panels didn't go far enough, at least it gets the conversation about it started. Also, I like to give out the link to the EU STOA report on Echelon on John's site, particlarly part 4/4: it's a little hard to dismiss representatives of the European Parliament as a bunch of nutjobs. Just giving people these facts about sheer technological capacity is worth far more than all the hot air I could ever blow about it. Conjecture can take a back seat. Likewise, I once knew an engineer who literally said, "I've heard about this Tempest stuff but I just don't know how much of it is true." So I gave him a link to the documents at the Cryptome Tempest archive and he could judge for himself. It worked, now he takes it seriously instead of relying on nebulous internet hype. Cryptome.org is so valuable, just getting people to read it is a public service in itself. ~Faustine. p.s. In case anyone here somehow missed it, here's the Echelon link: http://www.iptvreports.mcmail.com/stoa_cover.htm 'We live in a century in which obscurity protects better than the law--and reassures more than innocence can.' Antoine Rivarol (1753-1801).
Re: Undermining government power and authority
At 12:11 PM 4/25/01 -0400, John Young wrote: > >Podesta noted that the 125th anniversary of the gummed-envelope >was approaching. That that technology is trusted for privacy because >of custom and law backing the custom. He stated that any privacy >technology is going to be workable only if backed by law enforcemcent, >and, not least custom. > >He added that the fact that gummed envelopes can be easily opened >by intelligence agencies and law enforcement did not bother people. >Sub rosa, implied: people with nothing to hide. Yes, by hand. Keyboard bugging black bag jobs can be installed, by hand. By hand, not machine.
Undermining government power and authority
At a conference yesterday at Columbia on whether encryption will protect privacy -- among panelists Whit Diffie and Steve Levy -- panelist John Podesta, former Clinton chief of staff, argued that law will be needed to combat privacy-trasngressive technology, that encryption will not be up to the task. Two lawyers from the floor repeated the point. Podesta munged the issue of the needs of intelligence and law enforcement to invade privacy, munged it as if still obeying secret instructions from those cabals. Steve Levy reminded that Podesta before working for Clinton was on the other side of the crypto/privacy wars, aiding I believe Steve said, EFF. Podesta smiled at Steve's pinprick. A youngster from the floor observed that in recent years since the relaxation of crypto export controls not a damn thing had been done to actually increase the protection of the privacy of individuals, that on the contrary programs for governmental invasion of privacy had increased in the US and around the world. Podesta smiled at the wisdom of babes, techies just don't get reality politics, he appeared to gloat, with the non-techies smiling at his pretense survivalism. Podesta noted that the 125th anniversary of the gummed-envelope was approaching. That that technology is trusted for privacy because of custom and law backing the custom. He stated that any privacy technology is going to be workable only if backed by law enforcemcent, and, not least custom. He added that the fact that gummed envelopes can be easily opened by intelligence agencies and law enforcement did not bother people. Sub rosa, implied: people with nothing to hide. There were some murmurings of dissent to Podesta's real politic remarks but except for the young techies, not much. Indeed, as a newcomer to privacy and encryption conferences, and there are dozens of them now being sponsored, not much new is being said. One suspects that a numbing down is going on, to establish a custom of acceptance that privacy-invasion by government is as inevitable as death and taxes. Encryption in this view is just food for the gullible non-techies. The same is going on with technological means of digital content protection of all kinds, the techies are being dismissed as too idealistic in their promises of strong protection, that instead only global law and treaties will protect intellectual property cartels. As promised by the cartelish DMCA. So why would anybody support undermining government power and authority in the face of such confidence that no way Jose? Plot to undermine government go to jail, do research to undermine, get clubbed with DMCA. Just think about undermining, your brainwaves will be logged. Bamford reports that in the 1960s the USG was picking up Tempest emanations from Russian encryption machines in Cuba from a surveillance ship four miles away. And lots more techie stuff that would terrify a law solves all believer. But then that may be why Podesta was scared shitless by lawless technology -- having been briefed on what contemporary shit is going on to surveil him and everybody else, behind the calls for NSA going deaf and the FBI pretending to be shocked at its diminished abilities.
