RE: Dot-commers to blame for anti-capitalist violence, says WTO
-- On 6 Jul 2001, at 18:54, Trei, Peter wrote: > Moore made his remarks in Geneva, in an appeal for citizens > groups (NGOs) to distance themselves from "masked > stone-throwers who claim to want more transparency, > anti-globalization dot.com-types who trot out slogans that > are trite, shallow and superficial," he said. > > Which came as news to us. We thought "dot com" types were > too busy braying into mobile phones and snorting enormous > quantities of Bolivian marching powder as they vandalised a > communication infrastructure created at great public expense > for research purposes, with marketing plans that would get a > six year old suspended from kindergarten for frivolity. The WTO is under attack both from anti capitalists and pro capitalists. The anti capitalists are attacking it physically, with stones. The pro capitalists are using more sophisticated weapons, the "trite, shallow and supercial" arguments he dismisses. The pro capitalists are arguing that the multilateral approach to freeing trade has failed, as now too many people are looking for a gravy train in international regulation, and the solution is unilateral free trade policies, like those implemented by Singapore and Hong Kong -- that the WTO is beginning to be harmful, rather than helpful, for free trade. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG /OS0clQxBlI8w2AmxGTqQdeAGTCLAL+gOHqiP4Qs 4g5HvgJ/YLgAVlaNOte9/E7VAOdw5nIc009qpLLAU
Re: Meatspace,
-- > > > > there are plenty of SDS and > > > > Black Panthers running around today, the vast majority never > > > > went to jail. Faustine: > >> Of course they didn't. The bottom line is that their > >> organizations were torn apart by operations conducted against > >> them, James A. Donald: > > This is incorrect. The black panthers were torn apart because > > they murdered dissidents, and "dissidents" came to include anyone > > who wondered if Newton was snorting too much of the Black Panther > > funds. The same is true to a greater or lesser extent of most of > > the other armed communist organizations. The first target of > > those arms was always themselves, to a greater or lesser extent, > > though this was most dramatic and bloody in the case of the Black > > Panthers. Faustine: > The FBI explioted this mindset to the hilt--COINTELPRO kept them all > twitching like galvanic frogs. To blame COINTELPRO for radical leftist internal violence is as silly as blaming Pol Pot and the Ukraine famine on the CIA. If those radicals were being murdered by the feds, the radical left would have been eager to have them investigated, instead of closing their eyes and looking the other way, and suddenly dropping vanished radicals down the memory hatch. The way we all reacted shows that we all knew full well who was doing it. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Nj6L7D4+iqIYLrqePScZ1+RnIYBVbTSDAfIfAvK8 4jz/6Wo05VLuzxtUNNceNbo+ZirjyFUgSU4e1dUt5
Re: Meatspace
-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > If those radicals were being murdered by the feds, the radical > > left would have been eager to have them investigated, instead of > > closing their eyes and looking the other way, and suddenly > > dropping vanished radicals down the memory hatch. On 15 Jul 2001, at 22:22, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Being subject to: > > o illegal "Echelon" monitoring > o murderous attempts on the organization > o a "grand scale" of FBI interference with civil rights orgs > o FBI aiding false imprisonment > > ...doesn't exactly make for a peaceful democratic process. The blank panthers and the rest were opposed to the bourgeois democratic process. They did not require any pressure from the spooks to persuade them to deviate from it. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG TWVsSmXlKGPgP5psBmekM8uQU/SiJ1zqTAZkuMPA 45fu5MBEuiwlzf2k7dIvi6XLnZh9ypkkByC7bJBkv
Re: Meatspace,
-- On 16 Jul 2001, at 15:52, wrote: James A. Donald: > > > > The black panthers were torn apart because they murdered > > > > dissidents Faustine > My point was the feds didn't have to murder anybody--play them off > each other and they do it to themselves. If they were the kind of people who could so easily be tempted to murder dissidents, perhaps the spooks had the right idea. > Still, if you read the documentation, COINTELPRO was quite a formidable > program. Perhaps. The FBI by its very nature tends to do bad things, and we have seen some bad things done by the FBI to people who post on this list. I took a look at a few web pages reporting COINTELPRO, and found them long on unspecified rumors about things happening to unspecified people at unspecified places and times, and very short on any concrete evidence concerning specific people to which specific things had happened, much resembling web pages reporting widespread use of slaves, or widespread alien abductions. Now obviously we know of some real world activities that correspond to COINTELPRO, notably the attack on Randy Weaver, but it seems to me that there is absolutely zero evidence that the authoritarian and self destructive actions of the radical left during the late sixties, the seventies, and the eighties were the result of evil CIA mind rays. If such evidence existed, it would have been prominently displayed on some of the web pages I encountered. I find it much more plausible that commies did bad things, things characteristic of commies, because they were bad people. I did a web search for KGB and COINTELPRO, to find a web page that mentioned bad conduct by all such agencies. I found no relevant hits, from which I conclude that of all the people so vitally concerned about the bad things done by the FBI in the sixties and seventies, not a one is at all concerned about the bad things done by the KGB in the sixties and seventies. Of course it is reasonable for people in the US to be more concerned about US spies that Soviet spies, since the US spies mostly on US people, and the Soviet Union spied mostly on russian people, but still, zero relevant hits? I find that a little odd. This gives me reason to doubt the sincerity, and therefore the truthfulness, of those reporting COINTELPRO --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG CWUGSojScqdtb2OLwAmSDcwtXUw2BbiGQuFlO+64 4RIC9wK5YzoTa1WEOK1TCXmhoxiOg7zoB1ujHqbdZ
Re: Meatspace
-- > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > # > #The blank panthers and the rest were opposed to the > #bourgeois democratic process. On 16 Jul 2001, at 12:06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Is that some sort of excuse for the treatment I listed? It is a response to the claim was that the Panther's repression of internal dissent was somehow a result of CIA mindrays making them do evil things. They did evil things because they were bad people. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG qlDFQOxmMluDxFuqLdB9CLsJU/tO9Ae+Kj+5Sv4g 4fTsw4fPr/j4Vo7y1zRKq4rHFUfSM/EkcmYkfX4UK
Re: Meatspace,
-- Faustine > Still, if you read the documentation, COINTELPRO was quite a > formidable program. According to the FBI documents, a major objective of the COINTELPRO program was to detect when the Panthers did bad things, and use those bad things to generate adverse publicity for the panthers. But we know the panthers often did bad things without getting any adverse publicity at the time, which would indicate the program was not very formidable at all. An organization like the FBI will always find threats to security, regardless of whether those threats exist, and will always take actions against those threats, regardless of whether the threat is real, or the means legitimate. We should not conclude from this that all alleged threats are unreal, any more than we should conclude them all to be real, nor should we expect the FBI's actions to be competent or effectual. The FBI is doubtless formidable when its resources are marshalled against a lone guy with no money and few friends, but it seems somewhat less effectual against more formidable targets. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG dejpk8/VC1gQ+BWcMYsPjabAau5ab5Ux6d4TvfaK 4XFYqIaMT1SgApEjCSCmpCaMCTvaB7yOldgC7IF8n
Re: DMCA has pushed me to my limit.
-- On 18 Jul 2001, at 0:55, Sampo Syreeni wrote: > On a more general level, is US law to be construed as granting > personal jurisdiction over anyone on the US soil, regardless of > where the actual crime was committed? I.e., if I do something > wrong according to the Code, > I'd better stay the hell out of US? US law is often construed as encompassing the whole world. US judges tend to believe they can punish anyone anywhere for violating US law. This failing is not limited to the US. The french tend to the same delusion. It is quite difficult for government officials to comprehend the concept of dealing with equals, and often they just do not get it. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 6gSy4Y0z9ue33pDKeFwyzeM5elboNp2slIKTcX4z 4ujXVIoMs+xOSrPo7Igk7A/xMOmINtm/7qMlVAVRH
Re: Meatspace,
-- > > I find it much more plausible that commies did bad things, things > > characteristic of commies, because they were bad people. Faustine > True: but then there's always the gray area of exactly what's done in the > name of "what bad people deserve" that keeps me uneasy about the whole > thing. Have you read Gordon Thomas' book about the Mossad, "Gideon's > Spies"? He was allowed to interview all the top agency people, so you can > be sure nothing got out the agency didn't want out. Even still, it's a > fascinating, hard-hitting look at what happens when an organization of > brilliant, ruthless people come to exist in a system with limited > accountability: hardcore realpolitik at its most elemental. We know the spooks do bad things. They have done bad things to people who post on this list. We also know commies do bad things. The argument I object to is that all the bad behavior, the authoritarianism, the crimes, the repression, that we saw from the new left during the seventies is somehow the fault of the spooks, and somehow not the fault of the people who were doing it. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG jPlXakhxGCRandRTr/nKWOWtDxJX5Ry/EdBKmGPk 48oYFhL2YWrsHQTQ5bqQ6kvR/ZoWWOypTg9iDTuDD
Re: Ashcroft Targets U.S. Cybercrime
-- > > > Yes, it does work in the world of building reputations > > > associated with (anonymous or claimed-not-anonymous) keys, but > > > not when you need meatspace credit --give the meat named "Prof > > > Joe" tenure credit for work X. James A. Donald: > > It is common for real world authors to publish under nom de > > plumes. Adding a key to a nom de plume gives added advantages to > > the nom de plume. David Honig wrote: > A nom de plume which cannot be revealed to the folks one wants > credit from (because you go to meatspace jail when the association > is leaked) is useless for getting credit in meatspace. Yes the nym > gets credit; but it doesn't help you get tenure, or a raise, or > invitations to speak. The advantage of a nom de plume is that it can be selectively revealed, revealed to some people and not others, or revealed to everyone at a later date depending on how things turned out. Adding a public key to a nom de plume improves that advantage, The same is true of a nom de guerre, only even more so. To inopportunely reveal a nom de guerre is likely to be fatal. To be unable ot prove a nom de guerre may well result in the loss an personal gains resulting from victory. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG mkF3vClVh1ADZdWMKCRDtSJboD5GxB++yr8Wh4f1 4hd66T9IGIrYcT9RAm+JsBR1bEipLxfgpibdVoOpv
RE: A question of self-defence - Fire extinguishers & self defence
-- On 24 Jul 2001, at 1:20, Petro wrote: > And what is the primary responsibility of a soldier? Well, in > Basic Training I was informed that my basic task was to seek > out the enemy and destroy him. > > Whch is why using Soldiers in peace keeping missions is a > really, really boneheaded move. But not however as bone headed as throwing a fire extinguisher at a soldier, missing, then picking up the fire extinguisher to have another go just after one guy has whacked the soldier with a two by four, and another has whacked him with a four inch steel pipe. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 9WO/DF4M7KEFuERCw12la6FrYdJn2JC2eH8zHWgG 4dgHHLJm6v5oLAnpniC37IYnynq9xpNZvRc4pvJfD
Re: A question of self-defence - Fire extinguishers & self defence
-- On 24 Jul 2001, at 0:14, Andrew Woods wrote: > If you look at the Reuters image of Carlo holding the fire extinguisher, > he's holding it below head-level. In my opinion, that leaves three options: > Carlo was going to chuck the extinguisher underhand (and sideways to the > vehicle, so it would've bounced off) at a low velocity The rear window had been smashed in when they whacked the cop with the four inch steel pipe, or when they whacked the cop with the two by four timber. so there was no problem with chucking it underhand and sideways. Plenty of room. One is naturally inclined to chuck large heary objects in this fashion, because it is difficult to sling them overhand. In order to sling it in frontwards, he would have had to chuck it in one handed, and it was too heavy for that. In order to chuck it, he needed both hands, and in order to chuck it with both hands, he needed to chuck it sideways. You try chucking a great big fire extinguisher. Unless you are Arnold, you will chuck it in the same fashion. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG TrErF0pXmwrM9VpPj44NvC5XyHEaFb8NY20PqtIO 4NZ8BtIOAhWgajGsJGnMuLUi9Wlme6GjBMRTJfIya
Re: A question of self-defence - Fire extinguishers & self defence
-- > In addition the fact that a previous protestor had put a board through the > window only goes to demonstrate the high level of emotional disruption > these officers were exposed to. Panicking is not justification for making > a wrong decision. > > Deadly force was not in any way justified. A well armed cop had just been slammed twice by a two by four and once by a four inch steel pipe. A protester was about to hurl a fire extinguisher at him. He shot the guy Justified or not, would not you have done the same? --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG DwNy9Z3xWH7jI3ImfeUlX3wCsnPfQLmLguxcpDQl 4iR1ONYmJc10dQINKL0u1En/dpYJkbOFxzZY9pANT
Re: A question of self-defence - Fire extinguishers & self defence
-- On 27 Jul 2001, at 8:26, Ray Dillinger wrote: > This guy holding up the fire extinguisher two handed, on the other > hand, looks like he was intent on using it for a battering ram -- > to push in someone's face with it or something. There is a photograph of the fire extinguisher flying through the air at slightly above the level of the window of the police car. Looks to me as if it was intended to go through the rear window, but is in fact about to bounce off the upper edge of the rear window. I interpret this as a photograph of a previous throw from longer range, though one poster has claimed it reflects the fire extinguisher flying OUT of the police car. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG ckoZYS4R5Mj+swwHPvwEN/QzQK7HXXjSj5/ZFOp8 4TQIqT1Gm/H7HMvVY53JamctRbOyCOp5nNPtAQpdH
Re: Possible Internet Split (plan D)
-- On 26 Jul 2001, at 13:54, Ray Dillinger wrote: > The problem with Plan D, if implemented over the current Internet, > is that the low levels of the internet are a tree rather than a > proper network. There are choke points and listening points at > which all of a particular person's traffic can be guaranteed to > be intercepted. That is true of the typical home connection. It certainly is not true of many of the networks I have access to. To crack down on the internet, the government has to construct a mapping from packets to true names. In general that is hard, even though it is easily doable for lots of packets and lots of true names. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG RLqtJ72UcIIsUjZOwHNOsz/YzK+IpZPk8CuF2Jti 4ePgVwggx855XmBvPnEuSTEGX+J9Etf0m+xAq4qLa
Re: A question of self-defence - Fire extinguishers & self defence
-- On 27 Jul 2001, at 8:26, Ray Dillinger wrote: > > > This guy holding up the fire extinguisher two handed, on > > > the other hand, looks like he was intent on using it for a > > > battering ram -- to push in someone's face with it or > > > something. James A. Donald: > > There is a photograph of the fire extinguisher flying through > > the air at slightly above the level of the window of the > > police car. Looks to me as if it was intended to go through > > the rear window, but is in fact about to bounce off the upper > > edge of the rear window. I interpret this as a photograph of > > a previous throw from longer range, though one poster has > > claimed it reflects the fire extinguisher flying OUT of the > > police car. On 28 Jul 2001, at 14:02, Black Unicorn wrote: > Cite to the photo please? http://www.ballhausplatz.at/genua.htm --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG DQAI7wHPPTS3z1c83acoWE4SNB9/B7KNA/BH5R5 4HKiDZjqXDVtSBbRm7qA9d8apsdQoQ+TaTxxCYqCf
Re: DOJ jails reporter, Ashcroft allows more journalist subpoenas
-- Dark Unicorn: > > Not a particularly useful answer and not necessarily justifiable on the > > part of the court. I think eventually a better answer would have to be > > produced, one that justified the censorship. We're back to what > > originally struck me as odd, and wrong, about this item. Whoever has her > > stuff should copy it and move the copy offshore because something is > > very wrong on the part of the court. On 31 Jul 2001, at 0:12, Dr. Evil wrote: > Just because they're wrong and you're right doesn't benefit you at all > when you are in jail for contempt, losing your ass-cherry. The belief > to the contrary is what M. Unicorn would call a "classic Cypherpunk > fallacy". M. Unicorn is absolutely right here. Trusts are a great > thing which, in this case, allow you to completely achieve what you're > trying to achieve, while complying all of the court's instructions. > Use them! Why waste time being an outlaw? The point of using cryptography such purposes is to make ones non compliance undetectable, or at least unprovable. Trusts and the like raise a red flag. You are generating legal documents that advertise your intended non compliance and explain how you intend to do it. Further, if authorities really have the hots for you, they can apply pressure to the trust authority is all sorts of ways. They do not have to comply with the law -- you do. For example they could kidnap the child of the person holding the trust, and hint that in return for cooperation they will overlook the crack they planted on him, carrying a twenty year prison sentence. Encrypted data with a long passphrase will resist any amount of pressure. Legal solutions will not. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG MkiOliQYRoCsvFgXrPssDQkVSSND546JvVIRynLL 46tYSopIdwQ4wSNumiw8frcVouKamWs1caYcGGMD4
Re: Forced disclosures, document seizures, Right and Wrong.
-- On 31 Jul 2001, at 11:53, Black Unicorn wrote: > I wanted to make sure to correct the common misconception among > cypherpunks that you can just thumb your nose at a court with > impunity. And I would like to correct the common misconception spread by lawyers that there are magic legal formulas that will stop the state from using its power as it damn well pleases. The basic formula for avoiding inconvenient legislation is "ignore, do not confront" Cryptography will do what no legal incantation can ever do: Stop the state from getting what it wants. The basic problem with any legal incantation is that at some point you must explain to the authorities: "My actions were legal for this reason and that reason", explaining in inconveniently great detail what you are doing, and their response your complicated and highly informative explanation will almost certainly be to hit a few times, and then lock you up.With cryptography they have a mysterious block of unexplained and useless bits. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG JANNmX0j07QW30P9Cc27QiqF8q5cpCo3I8liMPSB 49dFf40+yHv+hoo3KF4nAfKebsirpjIxk0HHs2agx
Re: Spoilation, escrows, courts, pigs. Was: Re: DOJ jails reporter, Ashcroft allows more journalist subpoenas
--
On 31 Jul 2001, at 12:22, Black Unicorn wrote:
> Not being intimately familiar with the spec of freenet I can't
> really comment on that aspect or what a court will consider
> "impossible." What will not amuse a court is the appearance of
> an ex ante concealment or disclosure in anticipation of court
> action. If it looks like you knew it was going to be a court
> issue and you put it on freenet for that purpose, you're in
> trouble. Not only that but if you encrypt the stuff and it
> doesn't appear to be recoverable it almost sounds tantamount to
> destruction of evidence or spoliation (much more serious).
> ("The intentional destruction of evidence... The destruction,
> or the significant and meaningful alteration of a document or
> instrument...") I've never seen a case play out like that but
> I would certainly make the argument as a prosecutor.
> Encrypting the stuff sure _looks_ like spoliation, particularly
> if it seemed likely that the evidence would be the subject of a
> judicial action.
>
> [...]
>
> There are legitimate purposes for escrowing it on the Isle of
> Man over and above keeping it out of a court's hands.
And there are legitimate purposes for encrypting it and "forgetting" the key.
The big difference is "I forgot the key" is pretty much immune to cross examination,
whereas your "
legitimate" purposes for escrowing it on the isle of man requires a complicated cover
story which w
ill undoubtedly fall apart.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
l767+hopKaK3OhmU00x5dLsP9twS9adqsTDwX706
4GSivlIXyiUoZh4L503KHLLGtYLbjnNG8iNfZDzGr
Re: Spoilation, escrows, courts, pigs.
-- > > I have never heard of such a law. Black Unicorn: > If you know you've committed some kind of weapons violations or some such and > you have reason to believe you have come to the attention of the authorities, > burning the record of those bulk AK-74 purchases might be a bad idea- if you > got caught. You are full of shit. I do not keep records of my butter purchases -- Why am I supposed to keep records of my ammo purchases? The only records one is required to keep are those that you claim exist in some filing, for example supporting your tax deductions. No one keeps the records they should, let alone the records law enforcement would like them to keep, and no one has every been punished for failure to keep such records. If this law that you have conjured out of your imagination existed, everyone would be punished for it, for everyone has broken it. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Oj9UcAp8RSHCXuw8u7RlhqUHc74chNCrUWK2/9Q/ 4Xd24XW19DXZdpx9PbScFA7hohJEbS4IVCnIh9/a5
Re: Spoilation, escrows, courts, pigs.
-- Tim Starr: > > > Show me exactly which law I am breaking by placing some of > > > my documents or files in a place even I cannot "turn over > > > all copies from." > > > > > > I have never heard of such a law. Black Unicorn: > > If you know you've committed some kind of weapons violations > > or some such and you have reason to believe you have come to > > the attention of the authorities, burning the record of those > > bulk AK-74 purchases might be a bad idea- if you got caught. Tim Starr: > IBM instructed employees to destroy records. At Intel, we > destroyed records--I did so as part of the "Crush" program (to > drive several competitors out of business). So long as we were > not being ordered to turn over evidence, not any kind of > crime. Same here. Black Unicorn is just making this stuff up. Black Unicorn > > This was my theory. Hence my language: "It almost sounds > > tantamount..." Hence my cite of the definition of spoliation > > below, for comparison. Hence my discussion of a prosecutor's > > likely tactic in making the argument. Encrypting to an > > "irrecoverable" key certainly comes close to if not outright > > meets the technical definition of spoliation in Black's Law > >Dictionary. What "irrecoverable" means will depend on the > >judge probably. Tim Starr: > But, Black Unicorn, you're the one who chose to lecture all the > children here. > > I have asked for a cite that shows that higher courts, up to > the Supreme Court, have held that using Freenet or encryption > would constitute spoliation, which you brought into the > discussion as a reason why Cypherpunks had better not count on > using encryption, or offshore storage, or any other means that > might cause the court to "not be amused." > > They didn't get John Gotti for whispering, so I doubt > "spoliation" is nearly the tool you and Aimee Farr seem to > think it is. In the case of Black Unicorn, it appears to me he was a lawyer who used to be in the business of finding loopholes in laws. In a world where governments seldom bother to read their own laws, and when they do so bother they find that everyone is a felon, that is a dying business. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG nTddd9XZ1iJqpU0/ppYWEqYOLwArmipx2klG73S 4n86cH5ve4oq1hb/spodUgjWicxLpkJKTrn3FMB7h
Re: Spoilation, escrows, courts, pigs.
-- "Trei, Peter > > Cleansing disks and memory of keys and plaintext isn't done > > to prevent some hypothetical court from looking at evidence; > > there are good, legally unremarkable reasons to do so, which > > are regarded as good hygiene and 'best practice' in the > > industry. Black Unicorn > Unfortunately, that conduct is going to be assessed by some old guy who was > once a lawyer, Then we are all guilty, and not one person has been prosecuted yet, which is as close to being legal as any act can possibly be in today's America. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 3MMmQiEVIfvH6y20TVf6+DEUtNHLYjeZtBX1MaTH 4acehcMco5Ge0UNNFSiMi2j8dkV+0u416jba1q5DZ
RE: Official Reporters have more copyright rights
-- On 1 Aug 2001, at 14:33, Trei, Peter wrote: > No, Adobe did not use ROT13. They were quite a bit better than that Not significantly better. Same basic algorithm and weakness as ROT13 --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG n1bw14u4EICHhLIXuQsgDkABk92eCgbzm21yq7oH 4YcYWFe5f0mJBfMBkxqXtnasjxrzT2edzX05C7TLq
RE: Laws of mathematics, not of men
-- On 1 Aug 2001, at 14:54, John Young wrote: > The time for confidences is over. Lawyers are considering > a change in their ethics about ratting on clients (see NY Times > today); priests are ratting about criminal confessions; reporters > are ratting on interviewees, psychiatrists are ratting patients. > DoJ and the courts are squeezing all the privileged listeners > along with ISPs and remailers and sysadmins and CDRs and > trusted circles and cryptographers -- so what makes anyone > think mathematics of concealment is any more protection than > a concealed weapon I have found a concealed weapon to be wonderfully effective protection. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG bqsSWe9rP/yMGvoQHjl93FzC1ZS/g3HvZWu7P2V/ 4klW40XM7LlsB3QnfL86sfsGgKIc5Y2vM/TBzDjGM
RE: Spoliation cites
-- On 2 Aug 2001, at 19:22, Black Unicorn wrote: > I'm not sure where you have been over the last 48 hours but > clearly you've not been paying attention. > > Courts _clearly_ have the ability to demand the production of > all copies and originals of a document. They have merely to > order it. They _clearly_ have the ability to smack a gag order > on also. The rest of us settled that question some time ago. Glendower: "I can call spirits from the vasty deep." Hotspur: "Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?" --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Ywjj3CtTk6RG7TphPed4xvIXTirRoD963mVFppiD 4TMWUCKCfJEEAWFbqK8FpPS6l0wcp2jR1FTlka85H
Re: Spoliation cites
On 2 -- On 2 Aug 2001, at 19:01, Aimee Farr wrote: [...] (under ' 1503, documents destroyed do not have to > be under subpoena; it is sufficient if the defendant is aware that the grand > jury will likely seek the documents in its investigation); \All these citations obviously refer to situations where the case is already under way, and are thus irrelevant to the claims made by Black Unicorn. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG kd0oj5fW/o0EwOuuRzu0rlgeZRTBEVnHnrOlq6Ym 4GYnFP1LaTnH+jnHwsBZ1Ad41opi6PXN0S+xhyaK8
Re: Spoilation, escrows, courts, pigs.
-- On 2 Aug 2001, at 21:04, Ray Dillinger wrote: > > > On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, Jim Choate wrote: > > >On Wed, 1 Aug 2001, Petro wrote: > > > >> SBOE: We'd like to see your sales records for 1997-1999. > >> STORE: "Sorry, can't do that, see there was this *really* weird fire on my > >> desk last night, and wouldn't you know, all those records are gone". > >> > >> You're going to be talking to a judge about this, and no, they won't be > >> happy. > > > >And there won't be a damn thing that they can do about it either unless > >they can PROVE you were aware of THE (as opposed to a hypothetical one) > >investigation. > > Wow. You're seriously in denial, you know that? > > Hint: The cites BU provided are *REAL*. > This actually happens, routinely. No they are not real, and this does not happen routinely. I recall that at the time many people commented that had Nixon publically burnt the tapes on the whitehous lawn shortly after their existence had become known, and before certain legal steps were taken to obtain them, this would have been just fine. The fact that Black Unicorn and othes have provided irrelevant citations is pretty good evidence that no genuine citations exist. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG NksXX+cNhwnrt4r2mUqRDb8LjWJ6I4njoxilO5C5 4ADGWoawn1pTS+9vuAwsy3KT+Dnjm4gv/mHfZoEDH
RE: About lawyers and spoliation
-- On 4 Aug 2001, at 1:03, Aimee Farr wrote: > I wasn't speaking of "security through obscurity," I was speaking of > "security through First Amendment law suit." Nobody could argue "objective > chill" in here, that's a legal conceptbut clearly, you aren't > interested. With the DCMA and "campaign finance reform" the first amendment has gone the way of the second. Non political speech is not protected because it is non political. Political speech is not protected because it might pressure politicians. We have no precedents that routine destruction of precedents counts as spoilage, but we have ample precedent that any speech can be silenced. In the nature of things, it is far easier to enforce a law against free spech that a law against "spoilage" undertaken long before any charges, thus as we move towards totalitarianism, free speech will go first, is going right now, and broad interpretations of "spoilage" will come last. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG vFwRyVw26bcmnTVAmHWVa4hpohmWpeoEFQGcSvra 4KXMRn8toy5+YK/de6MG3wrAYnSnWzP5hSNtQYTzS
Re: About lawyers and spoliation
On 3 Aug 2001, at 6:03, Aimee Farr wrote: > All we lawyer-types are saying is to engage the law in your problem-solving, > it's in your threat model. Many of your "solutions" are 100% > conflict-avoidance, or even ...conflict-ignorance. A strategic error. Where > there is a corpus, there is a law to get it. You always PLAN FOR CONFLICT. > Hence, we have _The Art Of War_ -- and not, _The Art Of Hiding_. > > Hiding or secrecy as a total strategy has historically been limited by the > Rule Of Secrets/Least Safe Principle, and the equally-important "well, > doesn't this look suspicious!" -- a rule of natural law and human > disposition. Crypto is not a person, object and asset invisibility machine. > Until such a marvel comes to pass, stick to traditional wargaming. > > THE SITUATION: > - > Controverted spies have brought you intelligence that the enemy has a new > long-range weapon. You learn that it works, but you think you lie outside > the current range. However, you learn that it is undergoing rapid > development and experimentation. > > SOME OF YOUR RESPONSES: > --- > "They're dumb, I hate them, and they can't hit us." > > "IF they've never hit us, THEN they can't." > > "They can't hit what they can't see." > > "We should insult and burn the spies at the stake for bringing us this > information." > > "Bitch. Bitch. Bitch." > > *** > > Within this particular range of hypotheticals, the courts are going to see a > problem and they might reach for spoliation. Arguing over the rightfulness > or wrongfulness of it is a futile exercise. When you learn your adversary is > using a new tactic or developing a new weapon, you examine your own tactics > and adjust them accordingly in ANTICIPATION OF CONFLICT. You assume they > will "get better" unless you do something about it. Given the nature of the > law, there is nothing to be done other than to prepare for advancement and > proliferation. The legal question is never what is - but what will be. In > this light, precedent is not "a rule," it is an aid for prediction. > > "To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the > opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself." -- Sun > Tzu. > > A most apt analogy for the law. Where it presents an obstacle, it presents > an opportunity. > > ~Aimee
Re: WHERE'S DILDO (AND FRIENDS)? was: Spoliation cites
-- On 3 Aug 2001, at 0:09, Sandy Sandfort wrote: > C'punks, > > So by my count it looks as though we are now up to at least THREE village > idiots. Each convinced that he knows the law (not in theory, but as > practiced in reality) better than the lawyers. I know that for the past several hundred years everyone has been engaging in what what you call "spoilage" (failing to retain potentially incriminating records, and publishing material that might at some later time be declared a thought crime.) Zero busts so far. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG vISX2lmgcvBsqRWcFoH5IZsLSeBoD5kb19QGVHcr 4clSYeboF+YuOn/ZXdd/dZFyUu5c00tSeisbetvSE
Re: Gotti, evidence, case law, remailer practices, civil cases, civilit
-- On 3 Aug 2001, at 7:35, Ray Dillinger wrote: > You are wrong. I went and looked up the Caterpillar cite he gave. > It is real. I, and everyone else with half a brain, has long known that judges frequently say "Hey, we are about to seize a truckload of your documents looking for deep pockets^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hevidence, so don't start shredding. What we doubt is that it is compulsory to retain incriminating evidence, or to irretrievably publish material that might at some future time be declared a thought crime. We also doubt that anyone has been punished for such acts in recent centuries. The current state of the law is illustrated by the Nixon tapes, "The Wind Done Gone", and the DVD ripping code. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Lv4Or/aRW1ltIKBgGuJ1ievWlkgxLUG7tyjWay9n 4eKkwOU4Gi6P27UMPbRdhhRkcSn+Ig9HJV9ynm5SA
Re: Traceable Infrastructure is as vulnerable as traceable messages.
-- On 3 Aug 2001, at 12:07, Tim May wrote: > A distributed set of remailers in N > different jurisdictions is quite robust against prosecutorial fishing > expeditions As governments become more lawless, and laws become mere desires of the powerful, rather than any fixed set of rules, the state is increasing less one powerful entity, rather it becomes numerous entities each with their own conflicting desires. The danger is not that the US will turn into the Russia of the 1950s, but merely that it will turn into the Russia of the 1990s, a far less threatening prospect. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG qKJyYXYe2okyEhEp3rBXnrxcTNa1wfOGIuhA/0FY 4F/Y898UAwZpSU+bFjS1rygc8qLMNpT/4WDEJIc3w
Re: Spoliation cites
-- On 3 Aug 2001, at 13:22, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I consider it, as I said, monstrous that a judge > can legally deprive me of all copies of my own work in order > to enforce a gag order, but again, if that's the way it is, > that's the way it is. But it goes well beyond the bizzare to > suggest that I should anticipate the possibility of a gag > order and preemptively gag myslef in case one might be issued > at a later date. Judges have never attempted such crap, and if they do, lawyers will irrelevant, and will have been irrelevant for a long time before the such anyone attempts such crap. These guys (Black Unicorn and his cheer squad) are loons, and I cannot imagine why they post such nonsense. The argument they seem to be making is that judges, legislators, and bureaucrats are becoming increasingly lawless, therefore we should treat lawyers with worshipful respect. But that argument is completely back to front. As governments become more lawless, laws and lawyers become less relevant, not more relevant. As government becomes more lawless, first one hires fixers in place of lawyers, then whores in place of fixers, then gunmen in place of whores. American business in general is moving towards fixers, biotech is already largely past fixers to whores, and in Russia it is gunmen. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG yaXRYjQRaqKdRfYIdQ2uzBW1hnXxeNFzod0WHqd2 420eZw9m6TUyezphE2Z2tbXIvV4/9aHVQJTHAeRJE
Re: Spoliation cites
-- On 3 Aug 2001, at 9:48, Greg Broiles wrote: > Courts have relatively strong powers with respect to controlling the > possession and disposition of physical things like notebooks or hard disks, > but relatively weak powers with respect to limiting the dissemination of > information not in the court's exclusive possession, so long as the > disseminator is not a party to a case before the court, nor an attorney for > a party. This, folks, accurately summarizes the state of the law, as illustrated by numerous recent high profile cases, and any pompous pontificating fool who claims to be a lawyer and says something different, is full of shit. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG dSV6sI6yQ2/jieC4fpBN7te3dg/Ah5VH2uFW0sKW 4BMa39ojsj5zW2GHC0CbxCCaUmgmRViBZ3F2MHnvP
RE: Spoliation cites
-- On 3 Aug 2001, at 10:07, Sandy Sandfort wrote: > Apparently, James did not understand the thrust of Aimee's post at all. The > important thing to understand about legal precedents is that they may show a > TREND in the law. ] There is a trend to making everything illegal. Your qualifications to read tea leaves are no better than my own. By the time "spoilation" reaches the condition that you anticipate, we will not be hiring lawyers for their knowledge of the law, but for their knowledge of connections. As everything becomes illegal laws to cease to be laws. Increasingly legislation is not a rule, but merely a desire, rendering lawyers irrelevant. For example biotech companies usually do not hire lawyers to deal with the FDA, instead they provide FDA bureaucrats with girlfriends, "consultancy payments", and the like, because the FDA does not obey any fixed set of rules or principles in dealing with biotech companies. At the company I work for we have a big problem with a piece of legislation whose meaning is far from clear. Every few lines of this legislation there is reference to "children", or "the children".My interpretation of this legislation is "We care very much about children, and we feel so deeply we are going to bust some internet company for not caring as deeply as we do." Our company lawyer has no clear interpretation of this legislation, and suspect we would be a lot safer if we opened direct communications with the bureaucrats charged with intepreting and applying this legislation, rather than communicating through someone whose speciality and training is in finding and making trouble. We need someone whose speciality is being nice, making friends, and trading favors. Even better would be to do like the biotech companies, and open communication through a compliant woman, and throw in a few consultancy fees. In Mexico, lawyers are fixers, matchmakers that guide your bribes into the right pockets. The time is coming for American lawyers to stop pontificating about the law and make the same transition. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 6sCz2aeqtaUMwXK7XL2AZ9J8ZO0CqLdFbEfs0F3L 4qFdvH5dA/nEnrUvk+rZ5TD0tGcOO4gUjo8LTFTlE
RE: Spoliation cites
On 3 Aug 2001, at 13:53, David Honig wrote: > After MS was busted, it was widely publicized that it was thereafter > official policy to destroy email after N days. As if Ollie et al. wasn't > enough. If Microsoft gets busted for "spoilation" in their current lawsuit, then I will take Sandy and Black Unicorn off my loon list. :-)
RE: Spoliation cites
-- On 3 Aug 2001, at 22:43, Aimee Farr wrote: > Neither Uni nor I suggested that routine document destruction is > inappropriate in the ordinary course of business. I understood black unicorn, and Sandy, to be claiming it was inappropriate, and quite dangerous. You, while more cautious than they, seemed to endorse their position, without being very clear as to what it was you were endorsing. Black Unicorn's argument seemed to be "Everything is forbidden, therefore you need to hire a lawyer who will issue the magic incantations to make it legal. This is nonsense on two counts: 1. Not everything is forbidden. 2. If everything is forbidden, then lawyers have no magic incantations. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG KVURnDrFjBLaIMUnrQF4jJ/6XGm6Fe56w0c6HDmO 4jkT6RK0+blfBnsJVbGhAe97M4AxK14w+URbO5ubE
Traceable Infrastructure is as vulnerable as traceable messages.
-- On Fri, 3 Aug 2001, Ray Dillinger wrote: > You cannot have encryption technologies advancing and leaving the law > behind, so long as any vital part of the infrastructure you need is > traceable and pulpable by the law. Child porn still gets distributed through usenet. Silencing "alt.anonymous.messages" would be even harder. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG D3mSaXUOKtpBwVa0yzglN3AvpL5bobypB96Q/AKi 4/iQQK3RkSE349+qsFPX3zwyPj3kjETgblPuQ1wFl
RE: Spoliation cites
-- Harmon Seaver > > As others have stated, if you don't keep logs, or throw away all > > your reciepts, there's not jack they can do about it. At 7:22 PM -0700 8/2/01, Black Unicorn wrote: > Uh, no. And if you had been reading the many, many posts on this point > you'd see that about every one of the 10-15 cases cited here say exactly the > opposite of what you claim above. A couple of posts ago Aimee confidently declared that none of the people presenting themselves as lawyers on this list had made the claim that you just made again. She is backpeddling, because it has become obvious your claim is nonsense, and the fact that you made it, (and perhaps she made it also before denying that she or anyone else had made it) shows you do not know shit from beans. So, unicorn, when are they going to bust microsoft for suddenly enforcing a policy of purging old email? --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Au38iVX2zXvYvErjQyRaAVHpCKctxga5f/ey5tKo 4Kinm5mjm7cxjymJi84l4gZy3LNr3OG8A4zERWWaF
RE: Spoliation cites
-- James A. Donald: > > There is a trend to making > > everything illegal. Your > > qualifications to read tea > > leaves are no better than my own. Sandy Sandfort > Well James, you got it right once. My qualifications for reading tea leaves > are no better than your own. However, my qualifications for reading and > understanding laws and court precedents are vastly superior to yours. If the claims you are making are claims about existing law, your qualifications for reading and undestanding laws and court precedents are not what you claim them to be. If you are making claims about what the law might become in future, your qualifications for undestanding laws and court precedents are irrelevant. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG /JUhfzDVQCF/7NKP7QU1UGB738ENkVXkkgb3MUho 4r8gCfjL6dZ1G4PYIxS3LTIlIQ6LnjaS7n8qr81Lr
Re: Spoliation cites
On 4 Aug 2001, at 13:04, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > My impression is that BU's response to me was based on a > misundertanding of what I was saying. My impression is that whatever his original position, in the course of defending it, he made claims that were ever more unreasonable, ever more flagrantly wrong, and defended those ever more obviously erroneous claims by asserting the vast superiority of lawyers, and our vital need for lawyers, in an ever more condescending fashion. If judges behave as lawlessly as BU would up claiming they did, we have no need for lawyers at all. If judges are going to behave as lawlessly as Sandy now says he was predicting they will, we will have no need for lawyers at all. As for what Aimee is saying -- that was not very clear, and the more she says, the less clear it is.
RE: Spoliation cites
-- On 4 Aug 2001, at 12:46, Sandy Sandfort wrote: > No James, as any first year law student could tell you, they way one makes > educated assessments about how laws may be interpreted in the future are > NECESSARILY based on understanding laws and court precedents. And as any one can tell you predictions of how the interpretation of laws will CHANGE cannot be based on existing laws and court precedents. In any case, you are backpeddling like mad. Having dug yourself into a hole with improbable claims on mandatory record keeping, you are now disowning with great confidence claims you previously made with equal confidence, indicating your understanding of existing laws and courts precedents is none too hot. What was previously a claim about existing law, has mysteriously mutated into a mere prophecy that future law might change into something like your original claim. How about simply saying "I was wrong", instead of proclaiming omnicience twice as loudly when you are caught with your head up your ass? --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG oYQwaBShfigTeer8NiMlXddKCdSOWTS4O8e02M+i 4E5drtnvUZpAn4ZvzKDgEPqKkBdbdXNEe/BBlTF86
Re: JIM DONALD IS A CANARYPUNK, was: Spoliation cites
On 4 Aug 2001, at 18:29, Sandy Sandfort wrote: > Jimbo II has really gone off the deep end. I've asked him repeatedly to > quote me directly where I have said the things he alleges that have said.' You have asked me once, off list. I replied, off list. Now I will repost that reply on the list. -- On 4 Aug 2001, at 14:26, Sandy Sandfort wrote: > Show me where I took that position. A few posts back when I pointed out that most businesses engage in routine, regularly scheduled deletion of potentially inconvenient records, and none of them have got in trouble for it yet, you replied that a business that engages in that practice is like a man who has jumped from a tall building and boasts that he has not hit anything hard yet. Now, however, you deny ever taking that position, indicating that your previous position (the position that you proclaimed so pompously and patronizingly) was a load of old bananas, which in turn indicates that in this area of the law, you do not know shit from beans Whenever I ask our company lawyer a legal question, he usually answers "That is not my area of expertise". You should try that answer. It will keep you out of lots of trouble. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG L/TcMqBOExR0C26MZiO0EljjnWkcbyv8XYNyS2V1 4btCzzwGyuR3bJ/aMmwN9+Dycb01OHuOM4E4oXHm+ > His cowardice in failing to reproduce those requested passages (or even my > requests for the requested passages) is manifest. Give his intellectual > dishonesty and cowardice (next, I suppose, he'll be sending his son--rolls > of quarters clenched tightly in his little fists--to do his dirty work), I > see nothing to be gained from trying to teach this particular swine to learn > how to sing. > > I graciously cede the last word (which he will undoubtedly squander) to my > second-most favorite canarypunk. Rock on, dud. > > > S a n d y > > > -Original Message- > > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > > Sent: 04 August, 2001 17:33 > > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Sandy Sandfort > > Subject: RE: Spoliation cites > > > > > > -- > > On 4 Aug 2001, at 12:46, Sandy Sandfort wrote: > > > No James, as any first year law student could tell you, they > > way one makes > > > educated assessments about how laws may be interpreted in the future are > > > NECESSARILY based on understanding laws and court precedents. > > > > And as any one can tell you predictions of how the interpretation > > of laws will CHANGE cannot be based on existing laws and court precedents. > > > > In any case, you are backpeddling like mad. Having dug yourself > > into a hole with improbable claims on mandatory record keeping, > > you are now disowning with great confidence claims you previously > > made with equal confidence, indicating your understanding of > > existing laws and courts precedents is > > none too hot. > > > > What was previously a claim about existing law, has mysteriously > > mutated into a mere prophecy that future law might change into > > something like your original claim. > > > > How about simply saying "I was wrong", instead of proclaiming > > omnicience twice as loudly when you are caught with your head up your ass? > > > > --digsig > > James A. Donald > > 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG > > oYQwaBShfigTeer8NiMlXddKCdSOWTS4O8e02M+i > > 4E5drtnvUZpAn4ZvzKDgEPqKkBdbdXNEe/BBlTF86
RE: Spoliation cites
-- On 4 Aug 2001, at 14:54, Sandy Sandfort wrote: > Jimbo II wrote: > > > You, and Black Unicorn, have taken that > > extreme position. You were full of shit. > > Show me where I took that position. Put up or shut up, Jimbo II. A few posts back when I pointed out that most businesses engage in routine, regularly scheduled deletion of potentially inconvenient records, and none of them have got in trouble for it yet, you replied that a business that engages in that practice is like a man who has jumped from a tall building and boasts that he has not hit anything hard yet. Now, however, you deny ever taking that position, indicating that your previous position (the position that you proclaimed so pompously and patronizingly) was a load of old bananas, which in turn indicates that in this area of the law, you do not know shit from beans Whenever I ask our company lawyer a legal question, he usually answers "That is not my area of expertise". You should try that answer. It will keep you out of lots of trouble. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG mKrxv4usZ5hBIK0d2YohwCLJQIoHzWOPfiPEN/jd 4ey4eUt9h8r7iMn8KRlC29ieqEb7/l4Smn0KoyTx2
Re: The Curious Propsenity of Some Cypherpunks for (loud) Willful Ignorance. Was: Re: Spoliation cites
-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > I consider it, as I said, monstrous that a judge can > > > legally deprive me of all copies of my own work in order to > > > enforce a gag order, but again, if that's the way it is, > > > that's the way it is. But it goes well beyond the bizzare > > > to suggest that I should anticipate the possibility of a > > > gag order and preemptively gag myself in case one might be > > > issued at a later date. James A. Donald: > > Judges have never attempted such crap, and if they do, > > lawyers will be irrelevant, and will have been irrelevant for > > a long time before the such anyone attempts such crap. > > > > These guys (Black Unicorn and his cheer squad) are loons, and > > I cannot imagine why they post such nonsense. Black Unicorn > The only thing that is more surprising than your total willful > ignorance (have you even bothered to look at the several cites > I have posted that positively refute your statement above? A few posts back one of your loudest supporters suddenly reversed course and proclaimed that neither he nor yourself ever took such an extreme position, (his typically polite method of issuing a retraction) yet here you are taking an extreme position once again. The only cite that could possibly refute my words above would be to cite someone being busted, since the behavior you claim is illegal, the behavior that George announces his intention to engage in, is routine in most well run companies. > I have cited authority for the proposition that courts, and more often > plaintiffs, routinely demand broad productions related to a given matter. To be relevant to the case I and George speak of above, you need to cite an actual bust of someone whose work is deemed a thought crime, and was punished for ensuring that it was distributed out of his control before it was declared a thought crime. No one doubts that courts have broad authority to demand pie in the sky. What people doubt is that courts have broad authority to punish those who have rendered pie in the sky unobtainable, well before the case began, to punish those that have rendered the demand for pie in the sky moot. As I posted earlier in response to your claim of broad authority: Glendower: "I can call spirits from the vasty deep." Hotspur: "Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?" > I have cited authorities. I have cited examples. You have not cited relevant examples. We have actual legal precedents where a remailer operator was summoned before a court and said "Sorry, I do not keep logs." end of discussion. They cannot suddenly turn around and punish one for doing what one has legal precedent to believe is legal, and if we ever get to that point, you will have been unemployed for some considerable time. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG lZd4vAi2TTpp5GRW15mn1q+cyAFO0PJtAiYPT7GK 4aBAZQL08uKxJdCdzB6Qq5wZagEOir8ecDvv5GFYB
Re: Final Words from me about document production requirements and remailers.
-- On 4 Aug 2001, at 16:08, Black Unicorn wrote: > > I am going to try and be as clear and as slow as possible- > knowing full well that it probably will make no difference and > that my words will be twisted, strawmaned, touted or defamed > whatever I do. Regardless: > > [...] The trial court permits the plaintiffs to sue for > spoliation, mostly on the basis of the disposition of the car, > not the papers or lack of records, although those are > mentioned, Another citation whose irrelevance demonstrates the absence of relevant cites. The basis of the spolation charge was not that the dealer should have kept records, but that the car was disposed of when it was supposedly material evidence. This cite, and the other cites you give, supposedly "open the door" to charging people for spolation for failing to keep records in the ordinary course of business. Yet no one has actually gone through that door, despite the very large number of of people who do not keep records in the ordinary course of business, and the very large number of lawsuits obstructed by that failure. > I submit that the facts of these two cases, along with some of > the others I've cited and the FRCP among other statutes, > suggest that it's not much of a stretch for a remailer operator > to find him or herself in the midst of a spoliation dispute. Perhaps it is not a large stretch. Yet it is a good deal bigger stretch than hitting Microsoft with a spolation suit for its new policy of routine and regularly scheduled destruction of records, and Microsoft has not yet been hit. > I submit further that a remailer operator would do themselves > quite a lot of favors if they put themselves in a position to > look squeaky clean in front of a judge if and when this > happens. We have real life-real cypherpunk examples that this > works
Re: The Curious Propsenity of Some Cypherpunks for (loud) Willful Ignorance. Was: Re: Spoliation cites
-- > > > Judges have never attempted such crap, On 4 Aug 2001, at 23:03, Dr. Evil wrote: > Please do a search for "Negativland" and "U2" on your favorite > search engine. They were ordered to return to the court or > U2's reccord label or whatever, all the copies they had of > their U2 album. Every single copy. And had they previously dispersed these so as to ensure that they could not deprive themselves of every last copy, no matter how hard they cooperated with the judge, they would be in good shape. Sure, judges can issue any order they like. But if, before that inconvenient order is issued, you have rendered it moot, the judge is stuffed. And existing precedent is that if you rendered it moot, not by actions taken in anticipation of that specific lawsuit, but by routine and regularly scheduled actions, they are stuffed AND they cannot punish you for stuffing them -- or if they can punish you, no one has been punished yet. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG m9RWKkXvfzI/hw40BtTsPah8X9MqTBN7CZv9z9G1 4Bz7xZ/Sjs6Gfh6UG4ctXwEhe3Q2TMyj59+7+rT3w
Re: Traceable Infrastructure is as vulnerable as traceable messages.
-- On 5 Aug 2001, at 16:07, Sampo Syreeni wrote: > AFAICS, it's likely a matter of priorities -- currently anonymity does not > pose a significant threat to governments. If that changes, the heat will > intensify, possibly to a point where means currently unimaginable could be > employed (e.g. national firewalls, regulation of nonconduct, creative > interpretation of laws on criminal collaboration, RICO, whathaveyou). The great firewall of China is somewhat effective, but by no means as effective as the chinese government would wish. The Russian equivalent is dead in the water. We do not have magic armor, but, governments do not have magic bullets either. To effectively repress, a government must be lawless. But a lawless government risks either disintegrating, as in post 1990 Russia, or succumbing to a cult of personality, as in the 1930s russia. A bunch of very old men currently keep china wobbling between these two extremes. When they drop dead, it will wobble one way or the other. Since the cult of personality has proved so deadly to government officials everywhere, they will probably choose the safer course of wobbling in the direction of disintegration. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG wew6MK1X7o6m4yRVDWkDvm7xAIqUnFwOPMyVMxMN 4ljKTpl8pf+CmhVEGgTUk33zfdnbgqg7Qs9heEWDz
Re: Traceable Infrastructure is as vulnerable as traceable messages.
-- On 5 Aug 2001, at 14:17, Sampo Syreeni wrote: > "Conforming to international treaties" *is* the hip way to circumvent the > constitution. As we recently saw in the money laundering treaties, different nations have rather different interpretations of international treaties. Some time back the US government, in flagrant defiance of the first amendment, but in accord with international treaties, prohibited the internet publication of drug manufacture information. Sites were closed down, only to pop up again in different jurisdictions. The sites were simply zipped up, the zip files floated around a while, then found new homes. If they cannot stop sites that give information on manufacture of drugs, they have lost and we have won. Similarly, as I pointed out to some nutty nyms who claim to be lawyers, if they cannot shut down child pornography on usenet, they cannot shut down alt.anonymous.messages. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG zW4bx+3/mu5osmKYwXYF48PIBXO/A5OJWaqVupwo 43nVaMDSSAYnIC9+/uyWJJWEH4c+OUEMW0CZ8sYL8
RE: Spoliation cites
--
James A. Donald:
> > If one keeps records, and suddenly someone sues one, and THEN one
> > starts shredding, yes, then one can get into trouble. If
> > however, one shreds away indiscriminately, on a routine and
> > regular schedule, one is in the clear. As a remailer operator
> > said to the courts "Sorry, I do not keep
> > records".
> >
> > Now if he had kept records, and then erased them on being
> > summoned to the court, he would have had a problem. But because
> > he erased them routinely, no problem.
On 5 Aug 2001, at 5:03, Aimee Farr wrote:
> If you read any of those cites and shep'd them, you will see there are
> circumstances where
> defendants didn't know the documents were relevant to a specific lawsuit.
> There is support for the words "SHOULD HAVE KNOWN" might NOT equivocate to:
> "a lawsuit has been filed."
Might equivocate to a big cloud of complicated fog. Probably will. In fact it
already has.
However there is a large and glaring gap between the legal advice that Black Unicorn
is giving: telling us that routine regularly scheduled erasure and shredding is
dreadfully unwise, and the practices of many leading CEOs, that routine regularly
scheduled erasure and shredding without checking
what it is that one is shredding (other than date, and broad category) is good
practice and required.
In particular it is common good practice to routinely erase all internal emails.
This is a major obstacle to lawsuits, and is intended to be a major obstacle to
lawsuits, and yet no one has been busted for it.
If businesses can erase their email, then remailers can erase their logs, and I can
publish thought crimes on freenet and alt.anonymous.messages, and you lot do not know
shit from beans.
Care to explain the obvious difference between good practice as explained by you lot,
and the actual practice of good businesses?
If a bunch of people claimed to be highly qualified astrophysicists, and explained
that for all sorts of very complicated astrophysical reasons the sun actually rose in
the north and set in the south, I would be more inclined to believe that they were not
highly qualified astrophysicists, than to
believe that the sun rose in the North.
If shredding, erasure, and just plain not keeping logs is legal, then the cypherpunk
program is legal, and remailers are legal.
And it is as obvious that the cypherpunk program is, as yet, so far, still legal, as
it is obvious that the sun rises in the East. Yet Black Unicorn has been telling us
in no uncertain terms that it is illegal. The most recent post of his to which I
replied rejected the entire cypherpunk
program and standard business practice as foolish and unwise.
They are going to bust Bill Gates for erasing email before they bust me. Why is Black
Unicorn telling me I should be so terrified of the courts that I must abandon the
cypherpunk program, for a threat that has as yet not been made, let alone carried out
even against high profile targets?
> o email = most say a few weeks, unless it is a complaint, etc.
And what most are saying, is glaringly inconsistent with what black unicorn is saying.
> It's not so simple as many think. It's document specific.
But if it is document specific, and the remailer does not read the documents, and
could not be expected to know their relevance if he did, then Dark Unicorn's most
recent post on remailers is obviously full of shit. The remailers cannot possibly be
document specific, nor can Freenet.
Aimee's favorite citation, repeated yet again.
> ...First, the court should determine whether Remington's record retention
> policy is reasonable considering the facts and circumstances surrounding the
> relevant documents.
These cites are all "on the one hand this, on the other hand that". No one has been
busted specifically for a policy of routine document erasure. When Bill Gates is in
jail being sodomized, then we will worry. This alleged law is not a law, or an
existing court practice -- it is an opinion
held by some people that has never been given real substantial effect. If it is ever
given real effect, they are not going to start with us. They are going to start with
the deep pockets.
Aimees favorite citation continued
> Finally, the court should determine whether the document
> retention policy was instituted in bad faith. Gumbs v.
> International Harvester, Inc., 718 F.2d 88, 96 (3rd Cir. 1983)
> ("no unfavorable inference arises when the circumstances
> indicate that the document or article in question has been lost
> or accidentally destroyed, or where the failure to produce it
> is otherwise properly accounted for."); Boyd v. Ozark Air
> Lines, Inc., 568 F.2d 50, 53 (8th Cir. 1977) ("We recognize,
> however, that the destruction of business records may be
> sufficient to raise an unfavorable inference.").
More "on the one hand this, on the other hand that" fog.
Everyone knows why Microsoft's email destruction policy was implemen
RE: Spoliation cites
-- On 5 Aug 2001, at 5:07, Aimee Farr wrote: > If you read any of those cites and shep'd them, you will see > there are circumstances where defendants didn't know the > documents were relevant to a specific lawsuit. That summary of those cases seems misleading to me. You yourself have acknowledged that standard best practice legal advice is to routinely purge all internal email after a few weeks. That does not sound not compatible with your summary above of those citations, and it is incompatible with the positions taken by Sandy and Black Unicorn. Most of the postings issued by you three, particularly those issued by Black Unicorn, sound to me as if they were issued in ignorance of the standard and legally recommended practice, that you were unaware of standard best practice on the topic on which you were posting. To repeat: If it is legal to routinely purge all internal email, it is legal to publish thoughtcrimes on freenet, legal for remailer operators to keep no logs. If it ever becomes illegal, the lawyers will go looking for records of deep pockets first, and go after the remailer operators later. We do not have to worry about mandatory remailer logs, until after the lawyers have successfully enforced mandatory recording of all indications of deep pockets. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG rz25ERk2AhUYlyVa+bptsmwFk4GPnsFcuOKIu4CG 4FGjwWSSPJFC3LQUmXNIITgeThxTqDx73aiC1gwaT
RE: Spoliation cites
-- James A. Donald: > > You yourself have acknowledged that standard best practice legal > > advice is to routinely purge all internal email after a few weeks. Aimee Farr wrote: > Yes. Unless it is of special relevance. If one is operating a company, the guy who purges the email on the mail server is not expected to know or care what is of special relevance -- he just purges it by date. If he knew what he was purging, and chose to purge one thing and not another, his decisions would cause no end of legal troubles. The whole point and purpose of the purging is to ensure that those inconvenient emails that so embarrassed Bill Gates will be GONE, emails that most certainly were of special relevance. The whole point and purpose of Microsoft's new policy on email is to avoid a rerun of the Bill Gates courtroom saga, so that there will be no inconvenient specially relevant emails about Windows XP in the way that there were highly inconvenient specially relevant emails about Windows Explorer. And if it is legitimate for companies to avoid the Bill Gates experience by purging mail files, then it is legitimate for them to avoid the Bill Gates experience by encrypting with perfect forward secrecy, and all the rest of the cypherpunks program is similarly legitimate. > Dear company: > > I just wanted to write you and tell you that the microwave that I bought > from you exploded. Thought you should know. Nobody was hurt, thank goodness! > Maybe something is wrong with it? > > Thanks, > > Mrs. Smith > > The above wouldn't just be any old email now would it? Defence: "I am sorry. All our email is routinely deleted. All complaints corresponding to a single bug are summarized into a single entry in our bug database, and we have given you that entry. This alleged message would appear to correspond to bug Microwave#38 in our bug database, which we kept and gave you as part of your discovery process, giving you an accurate good faith account of all our knowledge of problems with our product. You will notice that our bug fix database records our prompt and effective resolution of the problem to which this alleged email appears to refer. " Accuser: "You threw away inconvenient evidence!" Defence: "No we did not. We kept it for some time, then recorded it in summary form, to render a large number of events as a small number of intelligible issues. This enabled our management to handle what would otherwise be an intolerable flood of information, and now it is producing similar benefits in this courtroom, since going through each complaint separately in the court room would have run up tens of millions of dollars in legal fees, which was of course your intention." Do you think this conversation is going to get the company in trouble for destroying evidence? I very much doubt it. (Well it would if defense spoke so plainly, but like Herodotus, I represent defence saying what he means, instead of what he would actually say.) More importantly that internal email from the VP of engineering that says "About the damned exploding microwave -- only customers that are so moronic they leave forks in the microwave and then blithely ignore the sparks, smoke, and balls of flame for the next ten minutes get that problem -- serve the damned idiots right" will never appear in the evidence, even though it is a lot more specially relevant than any one letter of complaint about an exploding microwave oven. James A. Donald: > > Most of the postings issued by you three, particularly those issued > > by Black Unicorn, sound to me as if they were issued in ignorance > > of the standard and legally recommended practice, that you were > > unaware of standard best practice on the topic on which you were > > posting. Aimee > No. I am unable to reconcile Black Unicorn's recent post, where he denounces almost the entire cypherpunk program as illegal by current legal standards and a manifestation of foolish ignorance of the law and obstinate refusal to take his wise advice, with the conjecture that Black Unicorn is aware of current recommended best practice in record keeping. If current best legal practice in record keeping would delete those inconvenient emails that so embarrassed Bill Gates, then current best legal practice in communication would encrypt them with perfect forward secrecy if they had to go outside the Microsoft LAN. If current best legal practice is to promptly purge old emails whose significance no one knows or cares, then current best legal practice is for remailers to routinely purge their logs. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG iNKRBgKrV7axkgj4JHrXK/1gfRpclWOQfEDw2/RU 4OSuu1OR1f+CYF/jeQpbgk6WEMCzQItifTJZeqiHV
RE: [spam score 5.00/10.0 -pobox] RE: Spoliation cites
-- On 7 Aug 2001, at 0:36, Aimee Farr wrote: > You guys are acting like Uni said, "THOU SHALT NOT WRITE CODE." That is what he did say: This thread started when someone proposed publishing thought crimes into an irretrievable medium such as freenet in order to render moot any future court orders to hand over all copies of some item of forbidden knowledge. Unicorn condescendingly explained that would be illegal, but with suitable mystic legal incantation it would be legal to escrow the forbidden information with some offshore lawyer. Which is of course total bunkum -- for the court can be as unamused by one act as the other, but the act that requires more explanations and legal documents gives them more handles to undo it and more reasons to put one in prison, and more inconvenient knowledge about one's affairs and activities, generates more legal costs, and puts one in front of the unamused judge for longer, giving one more opportunities to get into deeper trouble. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 4yvbwk+eYBStv1fohR52VeVtDMsVDz8BuOccrL60 4JnCvupJX0Zpf+njUZbnjhE65hs9Lj9mDDDSGk4UN
Re: Spoliation cites
-- Trei, Peter: > > I'll concur that BU is overreaching himself. Eric Murray > I read him as suggesting that some ambitious prosecutors might > possibly try to extend spoliation to that point, not that > they're doing so now. I read him as saying the prospect of prosecutors extending spoilation to include any act that we do not carefully record for the benefit of those who wish to harm us, is so overwhelmingly likely that we should right now carefully keep all records of our sins so that we can hand them over to prosecutors in future -- that these methods, tactics, and technologies are foolish RIGHT NOW, and RIGHT NOW using such technologies and tactics displays a foolish ignorance of the law, and a pig headed refusal to take sage legal advice. Sandy compared the practice of purging old email (routine in most big pockets companies) to someone who jumps from a ten story building, and boasts he has not hit ground yet. That is obviously a reference to the situation NOW, not future repression. Similarly one of them, I think Aimee, advised TC May that he should faithfully keep records of his PAST ammo purchases, in case that ammo becomes illegal in future, or someone commits some bad act with that class of ammo. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG VQzYv2UAqEb0o/wyCLdBrr7hAREwB113VOspuhU/ 4AZ7R8tXI7ibEvCwONehy2PzP8/J1FWtAaIeJZUPR
RE: Spoliation cites
-- James A. Donald: > > Black Unicorn's recent post, where he denounces almost the > > entire cypherpunk program as illegal by current legal > > standards and a manifestation of foolish ignorance of the law > > and obstinate refusal to take his wise advice, Aimee Farr: > No, he didn't. Every time you say "no he did not say that:", he promptly says it again in an even more extreme form, and you promptly announce you agree with him. That business about the "judge not being amused" is just the same old argument "If you use crypto that shows you have something to hide -- therefore you dare not use crypto". Lawyers have no special qualifications and authority to make such an argument, and when they make it should be met with the same ridicule as any other ignorant doofus who makes it. Most big companies, companies with pockets so deep that they attract lawsuits like flies, have decided it is better that the judge suspects they have something to hide, than that the judge knows full well that they have something they damn well should have hidden, and those deep pocketed companies routinely, on a regularly scheduled basis, in accordance with widely circulated company policy, do all the things that Black Unicorn has been telling us we must not do. No doubt it is true that one can be sued for shredding records that an enemy lawyer would have preferred one to keep, and such a lawsuit might well succeed, but a jew can be sued for discarding a ham sandwich, and such a lawsuit might well succeed also. Companies with deep pockets, continually besieged by hostile lawyers subpoenaing all sorts of information, do not seem as impressed by the fearful terror of failure to amuse judges as Black Unicorn tells us we should be. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG qmqbBFh1cJXpXWWSgMDC1f/66EGe34m2h/FZ8PkK 4WyQu6INj4rCPdEIuSJx4RNcQIVL6ovZsuoo63Dee
Re: Voice crypto: the last crypto taboo
-- > > > > ObSpoliationClaim: "Those who buy such machines are > > > > obviously trying to hide evidence. Mr. Happy Fun Court is > > > > "not amused."" > > > That is very true. Someone trying to defeat a charge of > > > being a boss in a drug gang would certainly not be helped > > > if they found Starium units in his house and in houses of > > > people who were distributing drugs. This would look bad > > > for Starium, too. > > Irony is wasted on some people. On 7 Aug 2001, at 8:19, Dr. Evil wrote: > I know you were being ironic, but PR is an important > consideration, far more important than is generally understood > on this list. The argument "Using X shows you have something to hide" is unlikely to impress in a world where most respectable middle class people have committed multiple felonies theoretically worth seven years each. Similarly, there is much truth in Black Unicorn's argument that the systematic destruction of potentially inconvenient records is illegal. However since many other things that large companies with deep pockets is doing are even more illegal, nothing is going to stop them from systematically purging records. The court will no doubt be unamused by Micorosoft's new email policy, but it was even less amused by the emails that turned up last time. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG H9q6eEZeMsGPCWsKCGfr2xddMa6h0gxbjk3/Z/7P 4O6wKWO9uIpG9Af81TlzJc2iiHMjCsCtR9xpR6VF7
Re: Traceable Infrastructure is as vulnerable as traceable messages.
-- On 7 Aug 2001, at 7:38, Declan McCullagh wrote: > Also, users won't immediately know about the new remailers or > have any idea of their reliability. And while the Feds may be > generally sluggish, when it comes to law enforcement (that is, > remailer raids on anti-terrorism pretexts), I suspect they can > be quite efficient. Provided they do not stop off at the donut shop. Some of the recent FBI scandals were callous indifference to human life and disregard of justice, but many of them were carelessness, neglect of duty, and gross incompetence. Similarly consider the CIA, whose assessments of the Soviet Union were consistently less accurate than my own. It appears to me that the level of corruption, laziness, irresponsibility, and sheer incompetence is fairly uniform throughout all branches of the government and all its activities. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 4+XoxbFtjmbwcVuklCLnkO3luRrkl/uC/vP8+7j8 4uxBjG18NPUTfucoHpSlutEoqUk9JOSyWeDgeamUq
Re: Traceable Infrastructure is as vulnerable as traceable messages.
-- On 6 Aug 2001, at 10:13, Ray Dillinger wrote: > Offhand, I'd estimate that if three US remops were taken down > forcefully, and the federal law looked as though any other > could be, all but two or three hardcases would cease operating > remailers in the USA. That would wipe out well over 70% of the > remailers, leaving a very small universe indeed to monitor. If the government decides to crack down on any one activity, and harm any particular small group of people, it is likely to have a large effect on that activity, and cause considerable harm to those people. If, however, the government decides to crack down on lots of activities, and harm lots of people, it is unlikely to succeed. Right now the government is cracking down on lots and lots of activities, and lashing out at lots and lots of people, with predictable results. To be effectual against remailers, the government would have to give them priority over lots of other people that the government wants to harm. There is a big big queue of people to be whacked who are not being whacked, and only finite resources to whack them. If the government moves remailers nearer to the top of its priorities, someone else gets moved back away from the top. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG MATT5Iy6h/FaowiQwNJm0qWfplP7ymQoeXaSY9kS 4w7niDzXVgD680AVmm/BlEoMXN+0I7nHUwRXzKrrV
Re: BESS's Secret LOOPHOLE (censorware vs. privacy & anonymity)
-- On 15 Aug 2001, at 23:12, Seth Finkelstein wrote: > I can't convey how ludicrous it seems to me. Declan is the > Fed's best friend. That's not an insult, that's a fact. Thats baloney. Declan has been routinely harassed by the feds. > He's provided > important evidence that helped obtain two convictions. Bullshit. They only called him in order to intimidate reporters from covering the trial. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG r/KEjYFJ8qd6sh4aNB/cT3smEFD3iLfOxedKC8SX 4HLEA5rF83RLJ8KGsjjyLNhBgEpEpFc8jRElwby5C
Re: Digression
-- On 16 Aug 2001, at 13:17, Morlock Elloi wrote: > Sorry to bother the audience with purely crypto issues, I just wonder if anyone > else evaluated this Ferguson's paper on apparent simplicity and therefore > insecurity of Rijndael: > > http://www.xs4all.nl/~vorpal/pubs/rdalgeq.html "and therefore insecurity" Does not follow. I would argue that rather the simpler, the stronger. A simple structure, if it can be broken, would have simple breaks. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG S1hKxB2ZdiFQfFn/0TRow7KAF/Yu/430mi64oJi/ 4ThCd/XGQLmoLjr/QPNOba1CIvb3yflWK2CXzPoZz
RE: The Privacy/Untraceability Sweet Spot
-- Reese > > You [Aimee Farr]are entirely too smug and happy, at the > > thought of these various mechanisms useful for preserving > > privacy and anonymity going the way of the dodo. Aimee Farr > That is not my attitude at all, Reese. It is your attitude. You keep telling us privacy is illegal. Most highly profitable uses of privacy are illegal somewhere, but they are never illegal everywhere. If you had your way we would all be obeying all US law, including those seldom or never enforced, or only enforced against black people and political subversives, all french laws, all Iranian laws, etc. Concerning your example of the IRA -- I recollect that for a long time the US government allowed IRA fundraising, and use of the US banking system for transfers to the IRA. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG LnyQwbLjSabEa0Lh4Qp314B6OXVNHjgvV/V5Hg5j 4ZtCxKVTkBd+heS8NdJoqew13kDVoqFasM3tTo/Qb
RE: The Privacy/Untraceability Sweet Spot
-- On 27 Aug 2001, at 16:00, Aimee Farr wrote: > Your idea does seem to offer promise as a vehicle for treason, > espionage, trade secrets, malicious mischief, piracy, bribery > of public officials, concealment of assets, transmission of > wagering information, murder for hire, threatening or > retaliating against Federal officials, a transactional > environment for nuclear and biologic weapons, narcotic and arms > traffickingsweet spots. *shakes head* Sounds good to me. I am sure it will sound pretty good to President Bush if the primary targets are in Sudan or Borneo, rather than the target being Bush. And it will probably sound pretty good to some guy in Sudan if the primary target is Bush. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG cP6zSfn46m6Tcs5LHfHssOmejDBq3DjqNkpEEtbY 43ILLkFOVdn0istQ5ydYLv94EZa/2p9G2WsMUao2i
Re: The Privacy/Untraceability Sweet Spot
-- On 26 Aug 2001, at 10:46, Tim May wrote: > Anyway, it is not easy to create a public company, a public > nexus of attack, and then deploy systems which target that > high-value sweet spot. The real bankers and the regulators > won't allow such things into the official banking system. (Why > do people think the banking system will embrace "digital bearer > bonds" having untraceability features when true bearer bonds > were eliminated years ago?) I think the safest convenient path to development is to develop untraceable cash in the US with restrictions on any large transfers. Then, once the technology is working, set up a complete new company in a jurisdiction such as Nauru or Antigua which allows bearer instruments of large value. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG IfH9fDFYT0gsZzF8W1c6SeYfXhieAuGmfGuJbr3e 4HmU02MVm3Sjt7wzdrSI7p7LHwBjt/+HG3dwDeuYD
Re: The Privacy/Untraceability Sweet Spot
-- On 27 Aug 2001, at 21:40, Nomen Nescio wrote: > "Freedom fighters in communist-controlled regimes." How much > money do they have? More importantly, how much are they > willing and able to spend on anonymity/privacy/black-market > technologies? These guys aren't rolling in dough. Freedom fighters are generally funded by expatriates resident in sympathetic foreign countries. These expatriates need C3 equipment to ensure that their money is not being embezzled or misused. By and large they are not using it, and should be. > "Jews hiding their assets in Swiss bank accounts." Financial > privacy is in fact potentially big business, but let's face it, > most of the customers today are not Jews fearing confiscation > by anti-semitic governments. That's not in the cards. Most of > the money will be tainted I find this unlikely. The powerful confiscate from the vulnerable because they want the money, not because the vulnerable are sinners deserving to have their money confiscated. It is always loudly proclaimed that the money is tainted. When the Swiss banks were receiving the money from jews it was supposedly tainted because it came from jews. Later it was supposedly tainted because it came from nazis. Any money is tainted when someone else wants it. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG N9AHhvoqlS9Irm/IDeEE6I1kYHYUm+CQGmeXPy82 44sVXA0FdW2m4055Ed20ew+iE84uYRYERsDpl8PjJ
RE: Agents kick crypto ass....was The Privacy/Untraceability Sweet Spot
-- On 27 Aug 2001, at 23:22, Aimee Farr wrote: > Considering the incredibly bad timing of this discussion in > light of world events, I don't see how you could call ME a > provocateur. My jibe was good-natured. You keep posting the > equivalent of classified ads. I know who wants this shit now, > and it's not "little bad men." The main world events that I have noticed is that President Bush has deballed the world gun control treaty, in part because it would hinder aid to revolutionary movements that have interests in common with the US, and that Bush is making unkind noises about the world treaty against tax havens and financial secrecy, in part because it would give the EEC too much control over international money flows. The state has always been repressive -- and different states have always disagreed strongly over what needs to be repressed. In 1376 the Holy Roman Church declared itself supreme in all matters of thought, and declared that any thinking not first approved and authorized in advanced by the church, and conducted in proper church channels, was heresy and/or witchcraft punishable by burning at the stake. However, under the original treaty between Pope and holy roman empire, any such burnings required both the Pope's judges and the King's goons (oversimplification, but that is essense of it). Since Pope and King were usually trying to kill each other, freedom survived, though not easily. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG ulrWnHbYmYLr1ALq5yaAlnuwr5SRSzH8gTSgtzmj 4dYLsf/2UwXTPBn4+ZQRxpjVyJJWsQWAYxEuZEWiN
Re: The Privacy/Untraceability Sweet Spot
-- On 28 Aug 2001, at 7:13, Jim Choate wrote: > What makes you think that new regime who used your tool to take > over won't then shoot you and take 'your profits'. By > participating you may in fact be signing your own death > warrant. All the liberty that there is in the world today results from the Dutch revolt, the Glorious Revolution, and the American Revolution. No oppressive regimes, with the exception of the Chinese, were produced by revolution. Every successful revolution has been a major step forward for human liberty (the Russian communist revolution was not a revolution, but merely a coup by a little conspiracy. Same for the Sandinista revolution). Even in revolutions that failed, like the french, were the old system was swiftly restored by Napoleon, the power of the old regime was fatally undermined. The outcome of the recent revolutions in Somalia and Ethiopia may be piss poor by Western standards, but compared to the rest of Africa they are pretty good, and compared to the previous regimes, they are wonderful. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG bstOJvcE7yZ9wE8/TgMBfXDE6jExhrBCsGAb/NnK 4Y74xyXZqu/wy4YGqo28RkMUFEWDhUUMk7L9BBPRe
RE: The Privacy/Untraceability Sweet Spot
-- > > Many people however believe that we [read: our government(s)] > > are in a downward spiral that is converging on > > police-and-welfare-state. In the US for example, we long ago > > abandoned our constitution. We still give it much lip > > service and we still have one of the "more free" societies > > but things are trending in the wrong direction. > > > > Each year more oppressive laws are passed, more things are > > made illegal to say or write or - if some have their way - > > think. (And of course it goes without saying that these > > things that are prohibited to us are available to "authorized > > users": those in intelligence, law enforcement, etc. - the > > usual "more equal" individuals.) On 28 Aug 2001, at 10:42, Aimee Farr wrote: > I might understand this better than you think. No you do not. You suggest we should not only obey all legislation that currently exists, but also legislation that does not currently exist, but that might be deemed to exist through failure of a judge to be amused, or legislation that might soon exist. This is of course completely impossible. Everyone has committed many serious crimes, often felonies, usually without ever being aware of it. I have committed hundreds of major felonies that could in theory give me many centuries of jail time, without ever doing anything dishonest, or doing anything particularly unusual for a respectable middle class person. Most companies I have worked for have knowingly committed many serious illegalities. My current company is making an honest effort to comply with all relevant legislation, but this effort appears to me ridiculous and doomed, since no one can really figure out what, if anything, the legislation we are attempting to comply with means, and what constitutes compliance. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG liVZOuTfoRZ0JfmM+NJZXhvgw6giwPDJ1L/iolQ7 4Q4yppLHxuZ/KDqZq2JgBqyRN3uKcX6lKlG7pjKDM
RE: Jim Bell sentenced to 10 years in prison
-- On 29 Aug 2001, at 14:25, Faustine wrote: > Which reminds me, I don't know why people here seem to think > that any sort of "deception operation" would come from people > who show up using nyms to express unpopular opinions. (e.g. > "you said something I don't want to hear; threfore its FUD and > you're a fed.") On the contrary, a really first-rate deception > job would probably involve having someone post under their own > name and acting in apparent good faith for years, only > introducing the deceptive elements gradually, after they've had > ample time to "overtly prove themselves trustworthy" You overestimate the subtlety and sophistication of the feds. Whether Aimee is a fed or not, her quite genuine ignorance made her incapable of knowing what views sounded cypherpunkish, and what views sounded violently anti cypherpunkish. If she is a fed, she probably also goes around buying crack and pretending to be a thirteen year old interested in sex talk. And if the feds were to assign a fed to our list, that is the kind of fed they would assign. That is all they have. When the feds were infiltrating the militias, their agents stuck out like dogs balls. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Y/QUrLveFkvsuJgVfNwK1zfk+lx3s4OHlWb91sov 44d/LXT5t59pPIp0rYC0PeMqXjXBTWSpb1Nr0YApP
Re: The Privacy/Untraceability Sweet Spot
-- On 28 Aug 2001, at 23:00, Nomen Nescio wrote: > The objection was raised, yes, it is moral, but is it > profitable? There are not many communist-opposed freedom > fighters around today, not much money to be made there. Most regimes on President Bush's shit list have an insurrection going against them. Most regimes with an insurrection going against them are on somebody's shit list. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG WtUFPNpsQLNxGP/qSqH2izBzHMq4ngVAAPohWVoX 4CIpMqIv/O63htMja6C1aD1cwbxzhNTB3Far6yVf8
Re: Fwd: Re: Tim May and anonymous flames.
-- On 29 Aug 2001, at 16:40, Gary Jeffers wrote: > My fellow Cypherpunks, > >Some time ago Tim May flamed me and I responded with the >post: > Tim May goes bush shooting. > http://www.inet-one.com/cypherpunks/dir.2000.09.25-2000.10.01/m > sg00388.html >. > Note: The 3rd reference was bad. The corrected reference is: > http://www.inet-one.com/cypherpunks/dir.2000.09.18-2000.09.24/m > sg00167.html >. > >This has gotten me thinking and I have the following > observations and conjectures: > > 1. It is predictable that Tim May will be flammed. The FBI has > a > history of covertly sowing internal dissent in dissident > groups. As a leading Cypherpunk, May is an obvious target. > > 2. Anonymous flames are dirt cheap and safe for the FBI. > > 3. The FBI will do them well. By definition, the flames will be > professional :-) > > 4. The flames will be worded so as to distress the target. > > 5. The flames will be seeded with clues to imply that a > particular > Cypherpunk did them: distinctive syntax, mispellings, > phrases, > etc.. > This will help make the group ineffective. > > 6. Other leading Cypherpunks will also be targeted. > > 7. The anonymous flames will be hard to falsify in their > pointing > to a particular Cypherpunk. Again, the masterly brilliant feds. :-) Not bloody likely. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG gEr16INPZtMFBKYPp83VqROIPjrN1unJ3A2AT3+U 4u6flxJureQW4HM8sC43dM+Z3Tyf49PUeGOGaAnnp
Re: News: "U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship"
-- On 30 Aug 2001, at 14:52, Faustine wrote: > And as long as you have companies like ZeroKnowledge who are > willing/gullible/greedy/just plain fucking stupid enough to > sell their betas to the NSA, you never will. There is nothing wrong with selling betas to the NSA. I make my crypto source code available to the NSA, and to everyone else. Everyone should do this. Anyone that fails to do that is up to no good. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 67dYNaWosvJqHSU041w2pF90I0cE+VHfMhQxInsf 4Is1TS6sNGfG1fhrdBPgbEbNEPYuv+XqX9gM0Ua0i
Re: News: "U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship"
-- On 30 Aug 2001, at 14:41, Faustine wrote: > Of course it has a trap door, that's probably the whole point > of getting it over there in the first place. And by the way, if > you're going to question SafeWeb for cooperating with CIA, you > might as well criticize ZeroKnowledge for selling a boatload of > the Freedom beta to the NSA in 1999 as well. What did they > think they wanted it for, farting around on Usenet? I bet they > had that sucker reverse-engineered and compromised in two > minutes flat. Stands to reason. I think it most unlikely that they could compromise rot-13 in two minutes flat, and as for reverse engineering, any decent crypto system makes its engineering publicly available, so that reverse engineering is quite unnecessary. No one should ever use a system that has to be reverse engineered. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG vmwKl1+31thMlrC2hl4XzwiD6EPSMqrBX8OqN5J0 4qFXhFjCIcqlGNHPzxbUC4Kfz95pkdg5H60E8+j1v
Re: The Privacy/Untraceability Sweet Spot
-- James A. Donald: > > (the Russian communist revolution was not a revolution, but > > merely a coup by a little conspiracy. Same for the > > Sandinista revolution). [EMAIL PROTECTED] > I'm curious how you draw the line? I.e., what defines a > genuine revolution as opposed to a "mere" coup? A revolution involves mass participation, and widespread spontaneous defiance of state authority. A coup involves a tiny little secretive conspiracy. A coup is announced, a revolution experienced. Few proletarians in Russia had heard of the communists, until they learnt they were the government. There was a real revolution in Russia, but many people felt the revolution had failed, since the new government was still trying to prosecute the war, and was still dominated by the rather small group that had been dominant under the Tzar. Then there was a coup by an even smaller group against this new regime. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG OB/GOuA4JAkfxP4knqOf5CtzmUwMdXLvcPtU4zod 4lAQXXdyE53P/QtVYnhCF2kjXLT0G14uFiMkmFHZE
RE: Jim Bell sentenced to 10 years in prison
-- > > Whether Aimee is a fed or not, her quite genuine ignorance > > made her incapable of knowing what views sounded > > cypherpunkish, and what views sounded violently anti > > cypherpunkish. If she is a fed, she probably also goes > > around buying crack and pretending to be a thirteen year old > > interested in sex talk. And if the feds were to assign a fed > > to our list, that is the kind of fed they would assign. That > > is all they have. On 31 Aug 2001, at 15:21, Faustine wrote: > Bah, it's dangerous to be so sure. And all the fevered talk > about Aimee being a fed is hysterical. Feds tend to stick out in the same way she does. That does not prove she is a fed of course, it is not even particularly good evidence that she is a fed, but there are feds on this list. > Haven't you ever gone to a usenet group and baited people just > for the hell of it because you were bored? She does not know enough about us to bait us correctly -- she also issues appeasing win-their-confidence stuff, and it is the wrong stuff. That incompetent buttering up very fed like behavior. Someone who does not know enough to issue the right win-their-confidence stuff usually does not care enough to issue win-their-confidence stuff. Of course it could be she is merely incompetently trying to douse the flames she has incompetently raised. The distinctive characteristic of an undercover fed is that they are pretending to be someone they are not, and doing it badly, confused about what their role is, and uninformed of how real people in that role act -- for example her recent flame againt ZKS. Real people who are really concerned about the security of ZKS, and really hate and fear the NSA, do not talk like that. Now quite possibly she is just upset by getting continually flamed, and is just putting on a rather bad act to persuade us she is on our side. But putting on a rather bad act is also something feds do. Incompetent acting is does not mean one is a fed, but if one is a fed, it means one acts incompetently. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG bvNfX+TTSpcSyw5LeyYoLXnLQ9EH6kfdobAIiWak 4NRdJFF3U6D8FTP9TYHQBiDeMBYxQri3bc6UwVsLe
Re: kuro5hin.org || How Home-Schooling Harms the Nation
-- On 31 Aug 2001, at 11:59, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > First, you depend more than you think on government actions for > essentials even though they have private brand labels. > > Second, why do you think that when someone is a government > employee they are automatically inferior to everyone in the > private sector? That's irrational. If someone in the private sector fails to please the customer, he does not get any money. If someone in the government sector fails to please the customer, tough luck for the customer. If the customer tries to do anything about it, he has the customer beaten up. Unsurprisingly, you get better service and products from the private sector. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG a21eN5yt4PeF/lTnRV4tQl5qv2vdpoch9zmrNw3H 4hJPCdOanWvOU31Y5QoQl0j0qowqJFwBL1WN8WEr7
Re: cryptosocialismo
-- On 2 Sep 2001, at 8:37, mattd wrote: > cryptoanarchy aka cryptocapitalism seems to be in crisis.Should > the hardcore libertarian individualist tap into a new source of > fire?During the spanish civil war/revolution,in anarchist > controlled areas,individuals were free to cultivate individual > lots and some did.After a while most drifted to the collectives That story commie fiction, and also completely irrelevant.If anyone wants a rerun of the debate about the failure of anarcho socialism, look up http://www.jim.com/cat/ --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG rsxWWWvR7ZUtdGlLT31y0OUYnplTsPfmPT+1tYyk 490OyRsnLUu2Nr7XRFx9rZl59ey2bFWTsoadZDd3A
Re: The Privacy/Untraceability Sweet Spot
James A. Donald:-- James A. Donald: > > Hitler won an election. Elections are not revolutions. Jim Choate > The election alone didn't make him Fuhrer The fact that a majority voted for totalitarianism and plurality voted for Hitler did make him fuhrer. And regardless of what made him Fuhrer, it was not a revolution. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG RpelMIrX2K4QW9RrV+FQSoasyeDmQ2AZiYJRqChp 4ZIDF43ciehEL5FHHjzW8DkYtOVIkC89UFJ3r8Y4c
RE: Jim Bell sentenced to 10 years in prison
-- On 1 Sep 2001, at 16:12, Faustine wrote: > All I'm saying is that if the feds are doing their job well, > they won't stick out at all. Smells like a witch hunt. Fortunately government employees seldom do their jobs well. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG VMG1ETupIefAXUXhriXMx/jYuZ/GAkBiR2bp0dam 4j11sKNzaPkhkV9Dcny7kqNAWJLgxx2fb75bC3eBw
Re: The Privacy/Untraceability Sweet Spot
-- James A. Donald: > > And regardless of what made him Fuhrer, it was not a > > revolution. Jim Choate: > It wasn't? They passed a law moving all the presidents power to > Hitler against the constitution. "They passed a law" is not a revolution, even if the law was unconstitutional, and it was far more plausibly constitutional than many recent acts of congress and recent supreme court decisions. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG sCjb3FyPkIA3ccCv1Edyms5TE8T8r5azQl1n/vTC 4ZUWu+8KwHCZrQsD98OEVKe12WiTrkmV15ORw/BkG
Re: More (Was Re: Naughty Journal Author Denied Plea Change)
-- On 9 Sep 2001, at 17:35, Matthew Gaylor wrote: > If Brian Dalton hopes to have his conviction for pandering > obscenity thrown out, his new attorneys will have to prove he > received poor legal counsel. But the attorney who represented > Dalton said that wasn't the case. "With all the facts that I > know, I believe he was effectively represented,'' said Isabella > Dixon, Dalton's original attorney. If your lawyer advises you to plead guilty without a plea bargain in place with a known penalty. or the charge bargained down to something with a small maximum penalty, that advice is so bad as suggest some conflict of interest or impropriety on the part of lawyer giving the advice. One would expect such advice from a court appointed lawyer who is taking his orders from the prosecution. Even if you are guilty as hell and they will have no difficulty proving it, you can bargain something out of them by threatening to put them to the trouble of actually proving it. Even if what Isabella Dixon says was true, it would still be a shocking impropriety for her to say it, since she is trying to influence the case in the direction of keeping her client in jail. The very fact that she is saying it suggests that it is not true. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG N+gTXtqTXzV+LqsT3VhwRNgg4WD0U1FCGjZJHe2R 4m5oCaRdB2JNt4mAF+yMc6WYVrMpA1l8jJs96RihK
RE: Manhattan Mid-Afternoon
-- On 12 Sep 2001, at 14:59, Trei, Peter wrote: > I sincerely hope that the remaining perpetrators of this > atrocity are found and punished, but entertain no illusions > that doing so will prevent future attacks. That can only come > from a shift of US government attitude from "I've got the > biggest stick", to one of non-interference. If it turns out that some of the terrorists were people who were beaten up a few times too many by Israeli soldiers, then the US government's only effectual remedy is to stop its alliance with Israel. If, however, it turns out that all the terrorists were from some countries that are unfree, poor and miserable, and are outraged by the fact that we are free, rich and happy, and blame us, rather than themselves, for their poverty and misery, then the only way to appease them would be to become unfree and poor. I would rather toast the entire third world, than make such a concession. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Y7uaIORhvsiSNFbd3uvHLO13Q10f+FGbxTR+8Hs+ 4oZbuoQ/ovQxHW9rYGsfEYtOODo7dZvu+F4J7s4Xi
RE: Cypherpunks and terrorism
-- On 12 Sep 2001, at 18:00, Nomen Nescio wrote: > Maybe our own policies and beliefs have turned against us, to > our detriment. There have been a number of reports that bin > Laden uses cryptography and even steganography tools. This > could still have a significant crypto connection. Obviously this catastrophe could not have taken place without the unauthorized use of paper. Paper allows people to communicate dangerous ideas and secret messages. With paper, anyone can communicate to large numbers of people at once, even if they are not properly authorized or in authority. The solution is clear. Paper must be a government monopoly . Paper should only be used for government forms and official government statements. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG AX7IyUtEmXvrShOs/Y1uEELi2xLS9MvBdLhpNDcF 43NVXCeYgSl5wL3xCAajeDqKq7BHzzaaz6RUzAgow
Re: MARTIAL LAW Cypherpunks and terrorism
-- Dr. Joe Baptista > They are the symbols of a struggle that has been going on > for many years. A struggle against oppression and planned > genocide in which the United States has been a significant > contributor and supporter. i.e. Israel's oppression of the > palestinians, i.e. south africa, i.e. east timor etc. etc. > etc. > > Arabs are by default very nobel, trustworthy and honourable > people. But they are not cows. They will not bow their > heads as their civilization is brutalized and raped. They > will fight back with the vengence that is the holy jihad You might have a point if some of the terrorists actually had been brutalized -- if for example some of them were palestinians that had been roughed up by Israeli soldiers. They were not. This was not an attack on America for any specific things the American government has done -- it is an an attack on Americans for being being free and rich, while arabs have inflicted slavery and poverty on themselves, an attack on Amercans for being American. When two hundred US soldiers were blown up for meddling in Lebanon, the US government go out of Lebanon. The US public is not going to stop being American, and will kill as many arabs as is needed to ensure that they are allowed to be the people that they are. If modest violence suffices, modest violence will be used. If modest violence does not suffice, the process will continue till no arabs remain. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 3t6naPZegDrRaTbM+ox6sVekeuRo+n/CtNeRqs+ 43Az2L+3CHnhDub/sVrxA+d8qvrcA6IgidF4t0EzU
Re: A Brevital Moment (was..Ignore Aimee Farr)
-- On 13 Sep 2001, at 20:26, Aimee Farr wrote: > My post was not "bait." The reason we have anything left of > the amendments so frequently talked about in here is due to > the independence of the judiciary. While you can question > aforesaid independence, threatening the judiciary is beyond > the pale. I have not seen any threats on this list to judges except your own. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG mBbFybVtN//9TWHKI38Ci+qZnDro4s/kORfW+Jd1 4JnAeMYe4DBpTW9S8+cI5MhVV/UPBhgjv1qcQgLYS
Re: "Attack on America" - a Personal Response (fwd)
-- On 14 Sep 2001, at 0:27, Riad S. Wahby wrote: > The labels "act of terrorism" and "act of war" are mutually > exclusive. The former is by definition perpetrated by a > non-governmental grou The claims by Dubya et al to the > contrary are incoherent politibabble. Nonsense. The words "terror" and "terrorism" came to have their modern meaning when they employed to describe the policies of the government of France, and later the policies of the Paris Commune. "Terrorism" is something that governments do. Later the word came to be extended by as hyperbole to the large scale violent acts of private organizations and individuals. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 1hyZaCFIbUJENZrS13LtF0UzviFJzURoXXNhj4fj 4q6r72GE0VAfAUP2u43osF7qZJBOb+oa2cf5Fh+BA
Re: "Ending States That Support Terrorism"
-- On 13 Sep 2001, at 20:01, Alfred Qeada wrote: > They're [Pakistan] also looking to curry favor, and > distance India. They're nuclear; you have to give them > respect They were not getting any respect. Their nuclear status could be reversed. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG BcmpZbQUUOQ25CdSnIDasTkntnaxhEkg8ENDk4TN 4k74fBhAl8Tp1QaPeZ01OWMx5ivtUSdDH5eGgMIwz
Re: New FAA measures likely to fail as well
-- On 12 Sep 2001, at 19:24, Steve Schear wrote: > The knife ban won't work against anyone with even a smidgen of > metal detector knowledge. Anyone can purchase a razor sharp > ceramic knife like this one > http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:Rd6ExOvaDz8:www.smarthome. > com/9126.html+ceramic+knife&hl=en Better still, this lovely little ceramic knife http://www.argussupply.com/images/boker-2040.gif is street legal in California. Get one now! The only solution is to do what many other nations have successfully done. Arm the crew and tell them to stop any hijacking by whatever means it takes. Against a disarmed crew under orders to cooperate, any weapon will be sufficient. Against an armed crew under orders to die fighting, no weapon will be sufficient. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG wbTKherEmEkb7WrFXVL2SLrBZcFURSqr2WfMfva7 4fHjwEeylrHZNSzsvNFE7AN0q3lxb6O8lmg9JtZ2b
Re: The Enemies List
-- On 14 Sep 2001, at 18:40, Nomen Nescio wrote: > Chefren - On behalf of the civilized readers of the > cypherpunks list, please accept our apology for the implied > threats of violence against you by Tim May. He is by no > means representative of the larger readership. He is alone > in calling for the death of those who hold views different > from his own. I, like Tim May, call for the death of those who violate our rights, who attempt to destroy our liberty, those within America, and those outside it. So would almost all of us, if it were not that you damn cops would use fragments of our words out of context. If there is no chorus endorsing Tim, it is because of well founded fear that it is dangerous in America to speak certain views. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG veNSQjWYzoKVNISF/OXzydTRWY3X1gGR/r58YurD 4hfe55dWwhfn+EXNxGQ2h9tfM1DIyeKxiIcue7Gpn
Re: MARTIAL LAW Cypherpunks and terrorism
-- On 14 Sep 2001, at 10:57, !Dr. Joe Baptista wrote: > James - I find your statements incredible. America is > being attacked for being rich and free? I don't think so > > If these people are arabs - and i still don't have any > proof of that - then we can assume they blew up the WTC in > protest of americas support of terror and antidemocratic > institutions - i.e. the palestinian israel problems. Those terrorists origins that have been reported so far come from parts of the arab world that are very far away from Israel -- and also far away from the oil. > Don't forget James - if in fact Bin Landen is involved in > this then the facts remain that the US Government sponsored > and assisted him during the Russian occupation of > afganistan. No the US government did not, though it surely would have had he showed any concern about Afghanistan earlier. Bin Laden was entirely untroubled by godless communists conquering, ruling, and terrorizing a muslim country. Bin Laden and the Taliban showed their faces long after the real holy warriors, people who do not make holy war on women and children, had sent the commies packing. Bin Laden hates freedom, the freedom which leads to the US culturally dominating the middle east. He does not worry much about foreign military domination. The Soviet Union was a mere military threat, which did not endanger the souls of muslims, only their freedom and property. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG DEJ5rgW8IcZ8JDlNeH+IgJOaekLOQXfOGH3rPjN8 4Na1wToW+otgrI6/UiTJjECa2nTf2XyUK425cXn5q
Re: Crypto-anonymity greases HUMINT intelligence flows
-- On 14 Sep 2001, at 11:10, Aimee Farr wrote: > I don't know why Tim makes me out to be such a bitch. I'm > pro-crypto and pro-privacy. You are pretending, not very well, to be someone you are not. As to whether the real you is a government provocateur, I have no idea. But the real you is not this persona "Aimee", nor does it have the beliefs to which "Aimee" pretends. You are also making an effort to conceal your writing style, or writing in a style that is not natural to you. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG OP7S7J6E/jPn1WNvSzb+pA2z+0VVj2WJhEkTFaGv 4y+qb8a++xiuG+5UBFqkOYx9bshRdN4uBnBUvsork
RE: A Brevital Moment (was..Ignore Aimee Farr)
-- On 14 Sep 2001, at 16:25, Trei, Peter wrote: > I haven't paid enough attention to AF to be able to form an > opinion as to whether she's threatened anyone. She did not say "I am going to kill a judge". She did however say that somone else was going to kill a judge. She and Nomen are trying to bring about a RICO conversation. Whether they are doing this out of a sinister government plot, or because they are stupid assholes, I do not know. Of course the internet has a considerably larger supply of stupid assholes than government agents. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG vMcE3M5nkj3Kodqq2CoA0LrPYjh2Yyfv2M4bNL0V 4bV0p9xh+C/5ye5W8o+8379e3hdd1F6bbXo/MK/Iq
Re: Imagining the Next War: Infrastructural Warfare and the Conditions of Democracy
-- On 14 Sep 2001, at 20:58, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > War is the health of the State. Terrorism is a good pretext for taking away our rights. A war to destroy terrorist regimes is a less good pretext, and if it succeeds, will remove one pretext. The end of the war will also spark a demand for a return to normality, similar to the anti socialist wave we saw in many english speaking countries at the end of World War II. Socialism, introduced under the pretext of war, was discredited by its association with the privation and authoritarianism of war. > War in the old conception was temporary: the idea was > explicitly that the state of war would end, and that the > normal rules of democracy would resume once their > conditions had been reestablished. What George Bush is promising, truthfully or untruthfully, is just such a war. A war where the good guys storm into the bad guy's presidential palace, and then come home to a victory parade, where upon everything returns to normal. All wars are bad for freedom, but the war that George Bush promises is far less bad for freedom than unending terrorism. Of course the previous Bush promised "read my lips, no new taxes." --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 1jV9etU3Tx6MJ9qdy97PFd24d9cqTlSgfWko3Xfz 4RSLKINEhK51FoPxlzP2C784tzxRjBqICVKcorKjR
Re: "bespectacled, nerdly remailer operators"
-- On Fri, 14 Sep 2001, Nomen Nescio wrote: > > Right, ninja troops carrying away bespectacled, nerdly remailer > > operators. Here's a better fantasy. They'll hire $1000/night > > superhookers and seduce the remailer operators into giving up their > > keys. Both have about equal chances of reality. On 14 Sep 2001, at 23:30, Anonymous wrote: > Pictures of three of these bespectacled, nerdly remailer operators: > > http://www.melontraffickers.com/pics/DC8_Lucky_BDU_4.jpg > http://www.melontraffickers.com/pics/rabbiGoneNuts.jpeg > http://www.melontraffickers.com/pics/DC8_noise_and_Lucky_hauling_hardware.jpg By and large, ninja style raids on remailer operators might be a poor idea. I suggest that Aimee's friends should try to obtain and present a search warrant first. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG PFUrCv6evJRB7Gk3g2/972Wz8AZcF3BMKb7tdg1T 4wV/6yDKveRPljJJ39kP5pXMViuQnbLvuZmP2hQvx
RE: Crypto-anonymity greases HUMINT intelligence flows
-- Sandy Sandfort wrote: > > Nonsense. Targeting innocents is evil according to EVERY > > human culture. The fact that people do it, does not make > > it "relative." It just makes them evil. Period. On 15 Sep 2001, at 15:04, Incognito Innominatus wrote: > Not according to Tim May. He was the one who wrote that he > was becoming convinced that Tim McVeigh had done the right > thing. "Some innocents died, but hey, war is hell. Broken > eggs and all that." Those are his exact words, May 9, > 1997. He's also the one that has called for the burning of > millions of innocents by nuclear fire.]] McVeigh did not target innocents. He targeted evil people, and innocents were in the way. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 5xbM0foCEbsEdzgNHhs9RknW32YmeilfgtA1xsrI 4jSDUr3w/0TX6oZ2ILD9FwmeaJ0hE9KJqmw+hsS0q
RE: Crypto-anonymity greases HUMINT intelligence flows
-- On 15 Sep 2001, at 13:13, Meyer Wolfsheim wrote: > My point is that such an attack could occur with nothing > more than economic factors as motivation. But they do not. Terrorism is a public good, hence cannot be provided efficiently by the free market. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 4O4xRo8KYFweaDehqSwjnucU8Z/tbY9yiOfvMgaO 4Kyp09Xj7Cq0VFjO+5sDw0OVa57jWj5+hC890w2Fm
Re: "bespectacled, nerdly remailer operators"
-- On 14 Sep 2001, at 23:30, Anonymous wrote: > > > Pictures of three of these bespectacled, nerdly > > > remailer operators: > > > > > > http://www.melontraffickers.com/pics/DC8_Lucky_BDU_4.jpg > > > http://www.melontraffickers.com/pics/rabbiGoneNuts.jpeg > > > http://www.melontraffickers.com/pics/DC8_noise_and_Lucky_hauling_hardware.jpg James A. Donald: > > By and large, ninja style raids on remailer operators > > might be a poor idea. I suggest that Aimee's friends > > should try to obtain and present a search warrant first. Meyer Wolfsheim: > Obtaining a search warrant will be easy. If you're > creative, you can imagine a ninja style raid as a method of > presentation. I suspect if Aimee is sent on such a raid she will suggest an alternate method of presentation. > As for Jon Callas's point on the second page, the fact that > the Reichstag fire was started by the Nazis, and the WTC > attacks were (ostensibly) perpetrated by foreign > terrorists, "ostensibly"? This sounds rather like Chomsky announcing "We do not pretend to know where the truth lies amidst these sharply conflicting assessments" > Anyone expressing anything but war-hoc statements today or > dissenting with the government's anti-terrorism measures > risks being labeled as an enemy of the state. Bush's claim, which I agree with, was that this was not merely an attack on America, but an attack on freedom. Overtly repressive anti terrorism measures mean going off message, conflicting with the administrations big priority of maintaining readiness for large scale war over a period of years. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG GCZhAccbcUMxsdhhPrmxo3zyLp+AozJ4Iz2SeuRl 4DQ0+GwnWBh+Q+fG2KQ/O4Q0kq3qUgFHAynEZCYea
Re: [havenco-discuss] Re: [Announce] HavenCo Sealand Remailer Online
-- On 17 Sep 2001, at 7:54, Dr. Evil wrote: > Yes, there are no "sustainable" non-tracable remote payment > systems in existence, and it's almost impossible for such a > system to exist. Why? There are many reasons. One of the > most obvious ones is that it would be so disruptive to the > activities of so many very powerful institutions (tax > collectors and law enforcement mainly) that they will shut > it down, where ever it may be, as soon as it gets big > enough to be on their radar. Staying small enough to be > under the radar is also not a sustainable strategy A sensible strategy is to set one up, stay small (micropayments) until the momentum starts building, then move to some place that still permits bearer bonds -- Antigua or Nauru. If they try to close you down in the micropayment stage, the judge, being unfamiliar with crypto anarchist theory, is likely to microfine you. The law is not concerned with trifles. > The more fundamental reason why an > untracable payment system is unsustainable is that it will > be used to pay for things which society (including all of > us on the c'punks list probably) abhors, such as > non-state-sanctioned murder-for-hire, and eventually the > operator will be found and put out of business one way or > another. By this argument we should have abolished cash already. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG JFaP31zYOsi+UM+0wvKxy2yqIv9jQbGD7nvxEJog 4j+MeJE2wu3qTScZeQQkLBEBYFCVbWKXNMqDJamkE
Re: [havenco-discuss] Re: [Announce] HavenCo Sealand Remailer Online
-- On 17 Sep 2001, at 10:30, Ryan Lackey wrote: > I'm not sure if I buy that remailers are even going to have > serious problems in the future. I see two approaches: > > 1) The aforementioned ecash-based system. We don't have a > problem getting people to smuggle drugs, because people in > the drug game get lots of money, women, cars, etc. I > wonder how many drug dealers would do it just for "moral > goodness" (actually, a lot of last-stage dealers do that, > just buying for their friends and distributing, which > obviously doesn't work for remailers; Works fine for remailers. If you need to use a remailer, run one. You know that at least one remailer in the network is OK, guaranteeing that your messages will be really untraceable. > I don't think we'll have to wait long for this kind of > theorizing on anonymous communications and prosecution to > no longer be merely academic. Closing down remailers right now would involve going off message. They might however go off message if the war is nearly won, or nearly lost. If the war is nearly lost, we can expect a claim that "we were stabbed in the back", followed by a focus on the internal enemy. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG bVRat5mEHVZsqG36x0si0fvps1elLGAhf9i2JTeT 4+akZKq1bBg9sR1kH3r9/fnKcYH+e0PCBg0UIIcAa
RE: SYMBOL
-- On Sun, 16 Sep 2001, Sandy Sandfort wrote: > > As were buildings above 5 stories in ancient Rome. > > Technology moves on. The question is not, "Can 250-story > > buildings be made safe?" The only question is "How can > > they be made safe?" Eugene Leitl > The question is: why should we bother? For the hell of it. Because we can. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG pVmj4hZ9kY3VS3tA+8Deu0M78yRPV4YnoT1/j2oW 4d7YetGNPaO0X7pEXnfo/qE/vpf7XJOpzWpCPzWDb
RE: SYMBOL
-- On 16 Sep 2001, at 12:16, John Young wrote: > Yes, Sandy, how do you do that? Sincerely, I'm not being a > wiseass. Some building types have disappeared over time due > to understanding that they don't work any more. Glorious > buildings that once were once seen as absolutely the best > ever. Forts, for example. Gothic cathedrals that failed > after exceeding the limits of stone construction. Every time a Gothic cathedral fell down they learnt something and built the next one bigger. I do not think they stopped building bigger because they reached the limits of stone, but because of economic and cultural decline --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG DdEAPIPoUhVXgNtWu041aUfOE5P4ZXTAzBXJtwOn 4fuxHq1EE+tFWtQcPMtXMxjwv9tPbEZWdUMCj4zi2
Re: Burning airlines give you so much more
-- On 16 Sep 2001, at 11:16, Subcommander Bob wrote: > Make religion illegal, lots of stupid problems disappear. Been tried. Did not work. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG EjYu4fBSdOfM3Mc33gnLv0ovMhY/ZANvvh/O5GZX 4S9hEva9fQ2guAClR82pAgCr4b5SF9UxeNG7G0NDh
