December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

ANONYMOUS DEATH THREATS FORCE COLORADO MALLS TO YANK SANTA
by L. Detweiler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

from the Rocky Mountain News, Denver, CO, Wed Dec 22 1993 p.4A (front page headline) ``Letters warning `Chuck E. Cheese was nothing compared to this' spur cancellation of St. Nick'' This is example of the power that can be wrought through more words, even anonymously. Apparently from no other cause than a series of anonymous letters sent to many Colorado malls, many cancelled their appearances of Santa Claus. In one mall, a Santa was surrounded by undercover police agents and others wore bulletproof vests. I have been to most of these malls and they are the largest and most prominent in the entire state. Anonymous mail carries far more weight today than graffiti sprayed on a wall! It is an extremely potent weapon, in the wrong hands! If this were a prank or hoax (various signs suggest this) it was an extremely effective and devastating one. And the ultimate goal of having it all `replayed' back in the media for perverse glee was achieved spectacularly. It was the front page headline on the Colorado newspapers. Merry Christmas, everyone... ===cut=here=== Colorado -- Death threats against Santa Claus have prompted at least several major malls to cancel their Santas, disappointing hundreds of children. Anonymous letters began arriving at malls Dec. 14. The writer threatened to shoot Santa between the eyes and ``kill more than an [sic] hundred people.'' Santas at Westminster and Northglenn malls were wearing bulletproof vests Tuesday, and armed guards were posted within 10 feet of some Santas. ``Isn't it a shame?'' Westminster Police Chief Dan Montgomery said. ``Even Santa Claus is a target.'' Monday, malls began receiving follow-up threats from the writer. Letters declared, ``Time is running out'' and ``Chuck E. Cheese was nothing compared to this.'' The writer claimed to be a Vietnam veteran angry that Santa has replaced much of the religious meaning of Christmas. The typed, identical letters were signed ``Terminator XX.'' ``I am filled with much hatred,'' they said. ``You don't know the horrible things I'm capable of.'' Police said they are taking the threats seriously. The FBI is investigating. ``What are the chances of it happening?'' Montgomery said. ``Extremely remote. But you have to act as if it's going to happen.'' The follow-up threats prompted cancellation of Santa at Southwest Plaza, Cinderella City and the NOrthglenn, Westminster, Cherry Creek, Aurora, and Southglenn malls. Officials at other malls are considering the same action. ``We felt it was in the best interests of the public,'' said Carol Hinson of Aurora Mall. Some children cried Tuesday when they showed up at Southwest Plaza and Santa wasn't there. ``This has been a nightmare,'' said manager Eileen Stembler. ``The anger it has caused is phenomenal, that someone would believe they have the right to take the fantasy out of Christmas.'' Mall workers posted signs designed to soften the blow. At Southglenn, a sign read: ``Due to the tremendous amount of gifts Santa must deliver ... Santa and his helpers have gone back to the North Pole to prepare. Please leave your Christmas wish list at the Customer Service Center and we will be sure Santa gets it.'' Most of the malls set up tables with pencil and paper so children could write their Christmas wish lists. Parents who asked about missing Santas were not informed of the threats. Some were told that Santa was sick. The threatening letters were sent to at least five malls, Westminster, Aurora, Cherry Creek, Northglenn and Southwest Plaza. They included the line: ``What a sexist thing to think Santa is a fat man who gives presents to people.'' The letters prompted dozens of metro-area Santas to quit, forcing malls to scramble for replacements. Susen Mesco, head of American Events and Promotions, said the threats prompted 25 of her company's 50 Santas to quit. They earn $6 to $40 an hour. ``Some of their wives didn't want them to work,''' Mesco said. ``It's not worth a part-time job. It just isn't.'' Those who stayed half-seriously asked for raises, Mesco said. ``I'm just trying to keep a positive attitude about this,'' said Tony Ratcliff, a 38-year-old Santa who stayed on the job. ``The authorities [have] already taken all the precautions.'' Before Santa was canceled at Southwest Plaza Tuesday, parents and children waited 45 minutes as he was moved to a sequestered room on the second floor. When Santa arrived, he was surrounded by five security guards. ``This set-up, it ruins Christmas,'' said teen-age shopper Brian Garramone. At Northglenn Mall last Tuesday night, Santa was surrounded by undercover security guards and was not allowed to leave Santa Land. Mall officials said he will not be there today. Last week, a radio communications system was installed in Santa Land so Santa and his elves could call for help, said the mall's attorney April Bennet Stone. Throughout the Denver area, people were wondering what kind of person would do this. ``This, unfortunately,'' Mesco said, ``is somebody who didn't get enough hugs as a child.''

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The Perils of Leadership
by L. Detweiler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I thought I would share with everyone the consequences of a failure in leadership, as expressed by different followers. In a situation where there is no trust, honor, or integrity in a group, a sort of paranoia and disattachment ensues. The leaders claim they are not really leading their followers, and the followers claim they are not really following the leaders. Here is a batch of messages I got from the `followers' in response to one of my messages to the cypherpunks group. I think it demonstrates rather well the degeneration that can ensue in a group where morality takes a back seat to self-gratification and glory. It is interesting how most people below avoid the question of associating with people that might be involved in immoral activities. By default, i.e. in the lack of protest, the former continues to support the latter. That reminds me of a parable by S.Boxx, `The Zen of Cyberspace', about a corrupt king who was carried around in a massive platform on the backs of his followers, who admitted the king was corrupt but continued because, in each of their own ways, they shared one of his vices. Amazingly, all these people claim that cypherpunk leaders are not sending them mail from fake identities, apparently without the slightest evidence or assurance from the leaders, and in fact a lot of circumstantial evidence to the contrary. Also, I also find it amusing that many, right after justifying various forms of lies, in the next breath claim to be `honest cypherpunks' . Cypherwonks, I hope to serve you in a way that will avoid the disintegration seen below. Cypherpunks, I hope that you can get your act together. Or maybe what I mean is that I hope your `act' continues to fall apart. === In the following messages, the following people claim that there is no conspirational activity (e.g. pseudospoofing, etc.) going on by Cypherpunks, particularly by the leaders. They don't answer my questions on specifics -- how do they know? but perhaps others can obtain some kind of substantive, verifiable evidence either way from them. Jim Demmers <jdemmers(a)noel.pd.org> "mycal" <mike(a)NetAcsys.com> === Follower #1 > I thought I might use the honest > cypherpunks as a wedge into the leader's sense of honor, but there are > no honest cypherpunks and none of their leaders have any honor. This was the first cypherwonks message I received and... I think that this generalization is a bit strong, and as an honest cypherpunk, I take some exception to it. There are many people who either read cypherpunks (or versions of it) who are honest, and simply interested in cryptography and (potentially) the side effects of it. Please try not to be so harsh to criticize such a loosely organized group as cypherpunks; many of us have no contact or even iterest in the leadership of the organization, and are just there for the crypto. === Follower #2 (Ray Berry) >> >> if the leaders are corrupt, where does that leave the followers? >> especially if they are unaware of the corruption? I have never considered those who dominate the cypherpunk mailing list my "leaders". Have you? >> >I would not be surprised if some of their actions are calculated to >> >simply further provoke or bait you. >> >> Let me ask you a question -- do you think J.Gilmore is among the >> `vermin' you speak of? E.Hughes? T.C.May? who? Personally, I don't see any of them as vermin per se. My impres- sion of Gilmore is generally that of a moderate. Hughes and May I feel less empathy with- probably because of their seeming preoccupation with anarchic fantasies, etc. In order for them to earn 'vermin' status, they would have to conciously conspire to manipulate me on a personal level. As it is I simply see them as misguided souls. Perhaps more salient is the point that, for me, I would prefer to simply judge the content on its own merits. After all, I don't know who these people really are, or of what cloth they are cut, save for their statements. If I cannot know who they are, how can I get very invested in their particular identity, true or otherwise? === Follower #3 (Mike McNally) "L. Detweiler" writes: > False. The issue is about truth and the morality of leaders. Will you get the idea out of your little head that Hughes is my "leader"? You're the only one with any such delusion. > >This is exactly like the question "Are you a liar?", to which the > >answer is always "no". > > False. In an honest society, lies exist. You are asserting that they do not. No, idiot, the answer is always "no" because a liar would lie. Duhh. === Follower #4 > Anyway, there have been a few questions by people on this list. `why > should we care about pseudospoofing?' the answer is that you should be > sure that your leaders aren't doing it. What is it with you and this "leaders' bullshit. I don't recognize any leaders per se on this list - just a bunch of subscribers - some with more knowledge and more to say than others. This is not the giant, conspiratorial 'movement' that you so love to bang your head against. A knight in shining armor you're not. === Follower #5 > > When I hear strange rumors about deceptions in the media, and your > eminent leaders fail to reassure me, why is no one else upset about > this? Cypherpunks, don't you give a DAMN that articles by reputable > authors may contain DISTORTIONS AND LIES? Look, Markoff is a highly > respected writer. And if you lie or deceive a reporter, that is like a > personal insult. These people could get *fired* if their articles are > incorrect in a serious way. but you don't GIVE A DAMN. you think it is > FUNNY that you can TRICK REPUTABLE PEOPLE TO BELIEVE IN LIES and so you > can PROPAGATE THEM FURTHER. If thats the way you feel, why don't you get pissed off at all the officials in our government. They lie to respected writers all the time. Worse they lie to the public that has entrusted them. Writers don't get "fired" for being lied to, if the writer interviews an "expert" in a field and prints it, he has that interview to back him up. A writer may get "fired" for pissing off the government -or- a media owner. If you truely wan't to fight the tenticals of deception you should go after the mass media, just about all media outlets are tenticals of some big corporation. Even if what you were saying was true about Tim and Co (which is not), in todays world they would still be looked at as heros by the masses, even if the government and its sheeple looked at them as criminals. > > Is there an honest cypherpunk in the entire world? None have contacted > me so far. There are a few people that are slinking away quietly with > their tail between their legs, but I think you all are just the same > scurrilous cowards that your leaders are. I consider myself honest [...]

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Re: anonymous video rental store
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Another technique for anonymous video rentals that's a bit more complex than buy-and-sell-back but feels more like a video store is to use deposits. Remember when video stores were just starting out and charged membership fees to join (letting them get started with minimal capital)? You could do a deposit system instead, where either - you pay the deposit when you join, equal to N times the cost of a relatively expensive videotape, and get N membership cards,; when you rent a tape, you hand them a card (they can be anonymous), and they give you a card back (pulled off a stack) when you return it. If some of their tapes are a lot more expensive, they may be two-token tapes. If you want to get your cash back, you give them the card and ask for cash. If this sounds like private money, yes it is. You could probably do it digitally, using online systems which can check whether a given number is in the bank when you try to deposit it, or getting fancier than that. or - when you rent a tape, you leave a $50 deposit per tape, and get it back when you return the tape, less $N/day. The tape and/or the plastic box it's in has their signature on it, and maybe the typical bar-code. If they want to get fancy, they can give out dated tokens/boxes with the tape, and you use the token to get the deposit back; it's probably much harder to forge a receipt that has the timestamp public-key signed by them along with the movie name, and if *they* start cheating, people start spreading rumors... Why would people other than cypherpunks, fervent civil-libertarians, undocumented non-citizens, and other professional paranoids (:-)) bother? Unless there's a run of major movie-rental-outings in the press (to make Republicans look bad so people forget about liberals not paying their housecleaners' socialist security taxes or whatever), the two most likely market drivers I can see are the porno market (Gerald Van Leun's (sp?) observation that sex is always a major influence on adoption of technology) though they'd probably have done it by now if they were going to, and perhaps the non-childrens' videogame market, especially to block heat from Janet Reno et al. for censorship and/or mandatory registration (registering all "assault videos" as a first step toward confiscation?) Using large deposits decreases the usage by children, so it may be a politically acceptable alternative. Bill ---- One of the corollary's to Godwin's Law is that many discussions will lead to someone saying "If %ss are outlawed, only outlaws will have %ss." :-)

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Happy Holidays
by L. Detweiler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Cypherpunks & cypherwonks, we have all witnessed first hand a great tension in our groups from the beginning, and I am sincerely upset by this wretched animosity. Someone is bouncing my postings to cypherpunks to the cypherwonks list anonymously, and it appears that other cypherpunks have surreptitiously infiltrated the cypherwonk list to promote pseudospoofing. Cypherpunks, I think we can get along if we both continue to observe courtesy and honor, as your leader E.Hughes requested some time ago in a message to both groups. This is my own attempt to resolve some of the friction, and I hope you will receive it in the best of spirits. I believe this will better aid everyone on both lists in choosing which to contribute to, and to avoid being publicly stigmatized or widely ignored for violations in the charters. Let me remind everyone on both lists the general purpose of both: The cypherpunks are interested in identity camouflage techniques in the name of `privacy', such as pseudospoofing. Members are highly suspicious of any government structure or any identification scheme whatsoever, to say the least, and are in general interested in evading and subverting these mechanisms. They are seeking to develop or press completely untraceable transactions into all realms of human endeavor, *particularly* economic ones. Traditionally this has been called `black marketeering' and `tax evasion' but the Cypherpunks object to these terms. Toward this goal, Cypherpunks are promoting Chaumian systems, in mostly very secretive development projects. In fact, Mr.Hughes recently met with Chaum in Dallas, I understand, so that both may further progress in this area, including setting up a credit union (credit unions are exempt from many banking restrictions the cypherpunks consider oppressive and invasive of privacy). Finally, the cypherpunks are also interested in infiltrating the media with accounts of their movement, as long as they are wholly complimentary and do not reveal the underlying libertarian extremist philosophy. The catchwords are `privacy for the masses' and `the cryptographic revolution.' Cypherwonks find identity camouflage techniques such as pseudoanonymity extremely dangerous, although we believe there is a place for straight anonymity in certain forums, where lack of identitification is not sensitive (such as outside of serious project development and our own list). We are interested in developing new structures that allow us to distinguish between fake and real identities and screen out the the former, using such things such as voluntary identity registration servers. We believe that all human interaction is based to some degree on trust, and this frequently involves the necessity of traceable transactions in most realms, *particularly* economic ones. We think that `black marketeering' and `tax evasion' are quite toxic for social harmony, and are quite aghast to see these dangerous philosophies promoted in Cyberspace to advocate `cryptoanarchy', or, simply, lawlessness. Toward our goals, we have started our new list and are building up new infrastructures for `Electronic Democracy' and other systems to help ensure that trust is not betrayed in Cyberspace. We see Cyberspace as an untamed wilderness that must be ridden of its more anarchic and pathogenic features before anyone can begin living here. We are open to everyone who is interested, no projects are kept secret from anyone, and to the contrary we abhor any sort of conspirational secrecy on the Internet, which we think is highly destructive to its essential nature. We are working toward systems such as `Internet mercantile protocols' that may not necessarily ensure total anonymity in all transactions (it is not our major design criteria, contrary to the cypherpunks). Finally, we are horrified to hear of a lie of any sort, whether it be from a fake identity, from a leader, or in the media, and we will even attempt to expose lies where we stumble on them, sometimes tenaciously if necessary. Media exposure and credit are not our main goals, but as this will inevitably appear, we will make our intentions clear. We are more conservative than radicals; we are not ourselves extremists, but moderates. The slogan is, `Civilizing Cyberspace'. I hope that Mr. Hughes or other cypherpunks do not object to the summarization above of the purpose of his mailing list. He and Mr. May have been sensitive in the past on topics that appear there and I assume they will correct it if it has erroneously characterized the official cypherpunk group agenda. Another statement on `privacy' can be found in soda.berkeley.edu:/pub/cypherpunks/rants. The summary above is based on my own extensive experience on the list and intense research involving ~5000 messages I have traded with perhaps hundreds of different cypherpunks and the leaders over approximately a year now (I will present more documentation on the Cypherpunk agenda and culture in the future). Those who question this characterization of the directions of the Cypherpunks should read the message appended to the end of this letter below. * * * I list the cypherpunks and cypherwonk group charters so that everyone in both groups can clearly understand the purpose of both, and perhaps in the future we can avoid conflicts due to a lack of understandings in the charters. If these arise, I have the following recommendations to all members of both groups. If you see something you might consider `flamebait', or deliberately provocative text that violates the charter, the most devastating response is to completely *ignore* it both publicly and privately. Imagine that the poster is advocating something completely depraved like child molesting. You do not want to have any such association with such a person, and perhaps the only response, if any, is a few lines `your posts are not welcome here' or `please seek counseling' sent in private email. If you can be provoked into childish retributions in response to childish provocations, it only unequivocally demonstrates your own childishness. The agent provacateur measures success by his perception of the depth of the damage he causes. Bouncing posts (either to individuals or mailing lists), mailbombs, and screeching obscenities in email are unjustified in any case. Your task is to embody the courtesy and politeness that your attacker lacks to effectively neutralize the attack. A vicious counterattack only leads to further escalation, perhaps to very unpleasant circumstances to all parties involved. This, to me, is the true spirit of humanity. Shouts are not neutralized with other shouts but compassion or *silence*. I sincerely hope that members of both groups can help develop systems that minimize the disruptions of the disreputable postings we both have been tormented by, e.g. those that are anonymous, pseudonymous, or pseudoanonymous. I think that we will all be far more productive and far less paranoid when we work in a cyberspatial atmosphere that by enforcing rules of courtesy, trust, and honor, basks in all. * * * Now, I have a few thoughts about `animosity' and `enmity' that I would like to share with both groups in the holiday spirit. I think we all recognize that the most noble human virtues are likewise the most difficult to consistently practice, particularly in situations that would seem to have plummeted into mudslinging in the gutter. But I would advise everyone that enmity and hatred, like love, are in the eyes of the beholder. Or, perhaps, rather, they are in the stomach, and they will eat away like an ulcer until you realize that hatred is never an appropriate human emotion, and enmity is inherently abnormal and unnatural. If you have any enemies, something is remiss in the world such that this venemous hatred developed. When we love or hate others, we are reacting to the essential characteristics of our own nature that are assuaged or attacked in others' presence. Furthermore, everyone should recognize the sort of `cosmic link' that you share with your enemies and loved ones. You are fated to be drawn to them over you lifetime because of the resonance between you. It is a natural law as inescapable as magnetism. I am reminded of the utterly despondent situations of war and violence in the world, of bitter racism and vicious nationalism that chain the peoples of the world to their personal hells. These are all cycles that replay over lifetimes unless broken by developing a strong aversion to strong hatreds of any kind. I remember when I was young, maybe somewhere around eight years old, I had misbehaved for some unremembered reason and my parents made me go to my room for several hours. I felt absolutely betrayed, disgusted, and viciously revengeful. I can remember thinking that I would never forget the appalling affront to my independence as long as I lived, and hoping something evil would happen to my parents -- literally, that they would die. I don't know where this poisonous anger came from. I was quite an angry kid in my younger years, and I remember episodes of my past with great shame and embarrassment now, and this one stands out strongly among all. I have heard of similar anecdotes from others, perhaps it is part of the underside of many people's childhoods. I hope that the consequences of my hatred have been erased just as my memory of the episode has faded despite my vow. But I shall never forget what black evil my mind had been polluted with for some hours. If the memory fades but the frustration persists, it is poisonous hate. I tell this story not so that you can quote me and ridicule me and throw this back in my face to prove that I am a dangerously, mentally unbalanced individual. I am telling you this to say that I am ashamed of vicious hatred in any form, and that my own animosities rarely last longer than a single letter. If they continue and persist, it is because something in the world is seriously awry, that the source of my frustration persists. When our attempts to resolve that which troubles us meet impregnable brick walls, one's frustration mounts. If anyone has been erecting these barbed wire fences in anyone's path, I ask you to stop the bleeding and take them down. In some ways, I have learned more over the last few months about fellow human beings than I have learned in my whole lifetime. It makes me nauseous to realize that I have ever made an enemy. But on the other hand, I have recognized in my short existence as a human being that many of the other passengers on Earth actually hate people for their better accomplishments, and use the slightest excuse to erect a barbed wire fence of enmity. They hate anyone who takes a strong stand on any issue, particularly if it involves their own most sacred vices. They will subject that person to the most scathing, vicious ad hominem attacks conceivable to he and his circle of friends and associates, even while they know that person is doing nothing but holding a mirror to their own deceptions and hypocrisies. But we cannot escape our own vices in the presence of others. Only sociopaths do not ever constructively criticize or listen to each other. And every extent and manifestation of social stigma is due a true sociopath by a society with any integrity. One of the consequences of hatred is `demonizing' someone, which Mr. T.C.May has advised against on numerous occasions, and his words drip with profundity. To all those who demonize anyone (including myself), I ask-- is it frustration or enmity? The difference is that if what you are railing against was resolved, and a window or doorway suddenly appeared in the brick wall, you would be elated and delighted if you were satirizing or constructively criticizing someone, and you would immediately forgive them. But if what you have is poisonous enmity, you would like to see this person die a cruel death no matter what switch in fortune or rays of light the future brings. ``They cannot ever be forgiven.'' This is hatred. And it burns like some insidious virus invading the flesh; it is fed by the creep of corruption and destruction. It replicates, it propagates, it reaches critical mass, it inevitably explodes like a nuclear bomb. Think about that a moment. Do you really want to see your enemies die? Imagine that some catastrophic misfortune visited your most hated enemy, that he *did* die a cruel death. Would you be intensely sorry or elated? Imagine that your enemies die the death of Marie Antoinette, Joan of Arc or Jesus Christ. Their grisly fates were the logical conclusion of the guillotine, fires, and spikes of your hatred. When your enemy *does* die a grisly death, beware of public backlash against the beheadings, stake-burnings, or crucifixions you watched, sanctioned, or championed. Be careful that your Movement or Revolution is inherently moral, controlled, and restrained, that thieves, criminals, psychopaths, and traitors are not hiding within it, that you are not warping the ideals you claim to embrace, that your excesses are not sowing the seeds of your own destruction, and that your own head is secure from the bloody blade. He who lives by the Guillotine will die by it. Sometimes, in retrospect, silence is seen as complicity. Sometimes, the riotous mob turns to feed on itself. Sometimes, when the prey dies, the predators become the hunted. * * * In the true spirit of Christmas, I would like to `unilaterally' forgive anyone and everyone who has attacked me in the past months. I feel no bitterness over your 4 or 5 letters to my postmaster, your massive sendsys and mail bombs, your harassment of those in the cypherwonks group, your lies, your treacheries, your betrayals, your treasons against friends, followers, and bystanders, and enemies alike. But forgiveness is futile unless the feelings of remorse are mutual and not unilateral. I ask others to forgive me for whatever ways I have truly wronged you, and you to cease and apologize for whatever ways you have wronged me (I have apologized to all cypherpunks in my posting, Embarassment, Humiliation, Shame, and an Apology). I ask you to distinguish between a vicious, spiteful attack and a message that actually hides the concern, `I am doing absolutely everything conceivable to prevent you from walking off a cliff, and if that makes me your enemy for doing so, so be it, because, as painful as my words and actions are for both of us, to me your life is more valuable than our friendship. To me your life *is* our friendship.' I ask all the Cypherpunks and Cypherwonks to find virtue in this tumultuous world we call home, to find some kind of moderation, sensibility, and virtue where it is desperately needed. I pray that we will all help bring not the world's darkness, but its light, to Cyberspace. Following is a letter from an eminent, avuncular cypherpunk, which helped me to release some of my own pent up frustration that has been bubbling and churning for many weeks now. This was written in response to my posting to the Cypherpunks, `Humility, Embarrassment, Shame, and an Apology.' Merry Christmas Happy Holidays Peace on Earth Good Will Toward Men L.Detweiler ===cut=here=== To: L.Detweiler <ld231782(a)longs.lance.colostate.edu> Subject: Re: Embarrassment, Humiliation, Shame, and an Apology >Above all, please do not >construe my heartfelt sincerity as ... satire. It _is_ difficult. What it does sounds like ... is the result of brainwashing. I have no interest at all in a thoughtless follower, and whatever faults your postings exhibited, lack of reconceptualization was not among them. Mind you, I thought most of those rethinkings were incorrect, yet I never faulted you for being uncreative. Democracy is the best way yet discovered for controlling centralized power, yet it is my opinion that the way to proceed is to eliminate the central powers and replace them with distributed powers. Therefore I disagree that the best goal is the extension of democracy into every realm. In deciding what mix of products an economy makes, for example, only dollar-votes make sense; to democratize production by one-person/one-vote would lead to a command economy similar to the ex-Soviet Union. I consider there to be an underexplored realm of distinctions between what systems are only amenable to centralized power (in which we choose democracy) and what systems may support distributed power (in which we may choose markets or other systems). You are interested in democracy; perhaps you could think about what systems still require centralization, and why. >I think that ... tentacle S.Boxx has demonstrated the damage that >can be done with pseudoanonymity. He ought to be [viciously, >violently punished] ... If one can avoid the thought of violence in the pit of one's despair, then one is well on the way to a peacable nature. Whatever the faults the postings of S. Boxx may have had, the physical body behind the pseudonym is in no way deserving of violence.

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Re: picture signatures
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

While timestamps do have some use for pictures, they're more limited in what they'll do for you. Paul Baclace suggested that if you have the oldest secure timestamp for a given picture, then you can prove it's yours. Some problems include: - NOT having the timestamp doesn't prove it's NOT yours, whereas a signature is real good evidence. - If somebody changes one or more bits of the picture, your timestamp is no longer valid; the same is of course true with signatures. But with signatures, you can demonstrate *who* you got the picture from, whereas timestamps don't do that very well (though I suppose you could accept signed timestamps as well as acceptingsigned pictures.) - Timestamps are more anonymous, but you can achieve the same effect with signatures by creating a random public-private key pair to signing each picture, and then demonstrate knowledge of the private key if you need to prove ownership. On the other hand, secure timestamps *do* give you timestamping, which signatures by themselves don't, so it's certainly a valuable addition. Bill

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Merry Christmas, Cyberanarchists
by an12070＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I understand that the CyberAnarchists led by E.Hughes, T.C.May, and J.Gilmore are utilizing and perfecting identity-treachery techniques on the Internet and even public media deceptions. I am quite impressed with what I have seen so far-- research into brainwashing and espionage techniques will always be dear to my heart-- although your accomplishments so far pale in comparison to my own achievements. If you wish to continue in your work, and realize your full potential, you should study the glorious Nazi Reich achievements in the area, of which I am quite proud. I give them to you below as my Christmas Present to CyberAnarchists everywhere. You will learn how over key years of the war (1942-1943) we deceived, turned, imprisoned, and liquidated key British agents attempting to establish and aid the underground in Holland, operated their stolen radios and ciphers to provide completely fabricated reports to British headquarters without suspicion and in fact under the utmost trust, and erected a complex and massive framework and fiction of dozens of imaginary spies complete with their own idiosyncratic personalities, whose exploits were reported daily, to repeatedly stab our enemy in the most sensitive areas of his back. We had a team of half a dozen radio operators who did nothing but send fake intelligence reports to Britain over the most pricelessly sensitive aspects of the war. We foiled the enemy's attempt to destroy a key transmitter that broadcasted the orders of the German Admirality to our heralded U--Boat fleet in the Atlantic. This made their invasion at the French coast near Dieppe more difficult and allowed us to continue to terrorize the world with our dreaded killer submarines. We manipulated the trusted radio reports and the Dutch press to convince the British that their spies had died in the attempt to destroy our extremely strategic transmitter. The reality was every single British radio operator and spy sent to Holland was either languishing in our prisons, subject to pressing interrogations, or simply liquidated. (The British agents were amateurs who were poorly equipped to deal with our crushing domination, no match for my specialists like Schreieder.) Most dangerously for the enemy we gained detailed information about British training techniques and even profiles of their internal espionage infrastructure from our treachery practiced on their newly dropped agents (which we were informed about ahead of time from the intercepted British radio commands). We occupied the enemy British brain with fake reports of the underground, and had him drop valuable supplies by plane (including munitions) to our imaginary arsenal of spies. Abwehr officer H.J.Giskes deserves his lasting place in Nazi fame and honor and in my heart for his extraordinary cunning in the North Pole operation. He even outwitted a late desperate control attempt by a seasoned veteran of the enemy to expose our network. We had Britain intelligence completely convinced we were training fifteen hundred men of the resistance and had them drop five thousand kilos of clothing, underwear, footwear, bicycle tires, tobacco, and tea for the imaginary army! For years we infected the enemy's own eyes and ears with insidious poison, and continued the acidic burn even after he finally perceived it! We only ceased when two of the enemy broke out of our prison and exposed the entire network. Rest assured that the warden received the appropriate punishment (actually, none would really suffice for his treasonable negligence). So, I think you will agree my dear Nazis have far surpassed your own infrastructure in sheer historical grandeur, although I admit your massive international arsenal of fake email identities is impressive in comparison. We are especially impressed with the automation, that is, the streamlined software of Mr. Hughes' to track intelligence, identities, and outsider personalities, and generate Cyberanarchist propaganda. Mr. Hughes is clearly the most professional and instrumental leader! A man after my own heart! Oh, and Blacknet! What a brilliantly subversive idea, Mr. May. Keep up the good work. The governments of the world are quivering! Cyberanarchists, I find particularly stellar the infiltrations into the reputable mainstream news media, most notably Wired (K.Kelly) and New York Times (J.Markoff). Surely J.Gilmore helped with these. You all understand well the necessities and techniques of a cover story (`privacy for the masses'), propaganda for the outside public (`the cryptographic revolution'), and brainwashing for the insiders (`lies are liberating'). Oh, how I lament that we may have succeeded in our own time with your glorious technology, ingenuity, commitment, and loyalty. You understand well my own dictum that every sacrifice borne, every sympathizer jailed, every traitor shot is a step toward the New Millennium. I wish all CyberAnarchists success in your own Kampf. Words cannot express the joy I feel now that my ideas have been given new life in this exhilarating new world of Cyberspace. Peace on Earth Good Will Toward Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , ___ . .//~~~. . //. ./. . //. ./. . //~~\ . . //~~~ . .//~~\. . / / . .//===. . //. ./. . //===/. . //===/. . //=== . .//===/ . +===#===+ . .// . . . .\\__/. . //. ./. . //. \ . . //___ . .//. \. . / / . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ~~~ ' ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Nazism, War, and the Holocaust: Coming Soon to the Internet Near You === London Calling North Pole: Glorious Nazi Treachery and Espionage By Adolf Hitler `North Pole' was without question one of the most effective German counterespionage operations of all time-- not so much because of the level at which it operated, which was not of the highest, but because of its complexity, extent, duration, and the cleverness with which it was executed. It would have been unthinkable before the days of radio. The British Special Operations Executive (SOE), during World War II, directed intelligence and sabotage operations against Nazi-occupied Europe from London via radio links to underground groups. It frequently air-dropped into enemy territory agents, equipment and munitions, as well as the radio operators themselves who were to work with underground groups. German Military Intelligence, the so-called Abwehr, was able in Holland to capture and `turn' some of the British SOE agents who had secretly been dropped into Holland. By controlling and dictating the messages of these agents in their underground transmissions to London, the Abwehr enticed the SOE to keep dropping further agents and material, immediately apprehended on arrival. Over a period of time (1942-44) a large part of SOE's efforts to support the Dutch Underground was thus neutralized. This operation was called `North Pole' by the Germans. It was directed by H.J. Giskes, an Abwehr officer, from whose book on the subject the following excerpt is taken (_London Calling North Pole_). `Ebenezer' was the name the Germans gave to the captured Dutch radio operator whom they had forced to cooperate with them at the time my account begins. MID is the Dutch Military Intelligence Service, working out of London with the British SOE. Funk-Abwehr is the German name for counterespionage units engaged in the technical task of locating secret radio transmitters by direction-finding (D/F) methods. And SIP and ORPO are German police units working in conjunction with the Abwehr. === London Calling North Pole by H.J. Giskes Our expectation that Ebenezer would soon be sent new tasks by London was subjected to a difficult test. We had not yet had much experience at this sort of thing and the quiet interval seemed all the more ominous by reason of the fact that we had incontestable proof that the London Secret Service was carrying out operations in Holland without making use of our `good offices'. The first of these occasions was in early April. I received a report from the _gendarmerie_ that the body of a parachutist had been found, the man having fractured his skull on landing against a stone water trough. Investigation showed that the dead man belonged to a group of agents who had dropped in the vicinity of Holten. In our efforts to clear up this mysterious affair we turned for help to the local Luftwaffe headquarters which gave out daily reports in map form containing details of all enemy air activity during the previous twenty- four hours. The information on which these maps were based was provided by air-observation posts and radar stations, which plotted the course, height, circling positions, etc. of all single aircraft flying across Holland. We were agreeably surprised by the completeness and accuracy of this information. We found, for example, that details of the operations over Hooghalen and Steenwijk on 28th February and 27th March had been fairly accurately recorded. And we were now able to confirm that the dead agent and his companions must have been dropped near Holten on 28th March. Through the Luftwaffe headquarters in Amsterdam we arranged for closer watch to be kept so as to establish the course of single aircraft, which we described by the word `specialists', as accurately as possible. The evaluation of these daily reports, whose accuracy steadily increased, gave us a useful line on the operations which the Allied Secret Service in England had started without our knowledge. Another indication of secret enemy activity came from Funk-Abwehr and the FuB headquarters, to the effect that a new transmitter had been heard in the Utrecht area, whose radio link had been fixed by D/F as lying close to London. Intercepted traffic indicated that this was the same station as that with which Ebenezer worked. And to add to it all Heinrichs came to me in the second half of April with the news that Radio Orange was once more passing `positive' and `negative' signals. >From all this we concluded that at least one group of agents was working in Holland outside our control and that preparations for other drops had been made. All this made me very uneasy about our play-back on Ebenezer. Had London smelt a rat? On 29th April Ebenezer received instructions to collect material which would be dropped in the previous area near Steenwijk. I was pretty sure that it would mean bombs this time instead of containers, so I took full precautions. I borrowed against the day of the drop, which was 25th April, three motorized 3.7-cm. flak guns from Huptmann Lent, the celebrated night flyer and Commandant of the airfield at Leeuwarden, which on the day of the operation were sited round the dropping area after dark. I had the red lights of the triangle fixed on posts so as not to endanger personnel, and arranged things so that they could be switched on from a point 300 yards distant under cover. The same was done for the white light. The flak battery had orders to open fire in the event of bombs being dropped, or if I should fired a red rocket. We switched on the lights as the British aircraft made its approach at about 0100. `Tommy' flew several times across the area, but clearly missed his direction, as the lights were not being pointed at the aircraft. As he crossed the third time I went to the apex of the triangle and shone my white light at him until he turned on his correct course. I have to thank the absence of bombs for my ability to go on telling this story. This drop was definite proof that London had not yet discovered our control of Ebenezer. I forgot, in my delight, the lamentations of the young officer in charge of the flak, who had not been able to fire, and who might never again have such a prize held in his sights at a range of two yards. The development of `Nordpol' reached a decisive stage at the beginning of May. All that we had achieved hitherto could only have been maintained for a short while had not luck, sheer chance, and ingenuity caused to fall into our hands all the lines by which the London Secret Service controlled MID-SOE in Holland at that time. At the end of April London found itself compelled to join up with one another three independent groups of agents and one other isolated individual. Since Ebenezer was included in this link-up, we very soon succeeded in identifying the whole organization. It happened in this way. In the period February-April, 1942, MID-SOE had dropped three groups of agent in Holland, each consisting of two men and a radio set. We knew nothing of these operations. Another single agent had been landed on the Dutch coast by MTB. The operations consisted of the following: Operation Lettuce. Two agents, named Jordaan and Ras, dropped near Holten on 28th February 1942. Jordaan was radio operator and was to work in accordance with Plan Trumpet. Operation Turnip. On 28th February 1942 Agent Andringa and his operator Maartens were dropped near Holten. The set was to be operated in accordance with Plan Turnip. Maartens had an accident and it was his body that was found near the water trough. Operation Leek. Agent Kloos with his operator Sebes dropped on 5th April 1942. The set was to have been operated in accordance with Plan Heck, but it was rendered useless by damage during the drop. Operation Potato. On the 19th April 1942, Agent de Haas, using the cover-name `Pijl,' landed by MTB on the Dutch coast. Pijl had no radio transmitter, but was equipped with a radio-telephony set capable of working at ranges up to five kilometres. He had been sent out from London to contact Group Ebenezer. Since the Turnip and Heck sets could neither of them establish communication with England, these agents made contact with Group Lettuce, which was operating the Trumpet set, in order to report their mishaps to London. It was not clear whether or not London had told Lettuce to establish these contacts. A signal from Trumpet, intercepted on 24th April and subsequently deciphered, indicated that Trumped had been in contact with Agent de Haas from Operation Potato, but that the latter had been unable to get in touch with Ebenezer. London thereupon ordered Ebenezer to make contact with Trumpet by a signal passed to the radio set under our control, and the circle was complete. A loose contact between different groups of agents had the disadvantage from our point of view that imminent arrests could be quickly reported to London, thus making it difficult to play-back a captured transmitter. But if this contact became a close one, as in the present instance where Trumpet was operating for three other groups, the danger for all of them became very great should one be discovered and liquidated by the German counterespionage. It was highly unfortunate for London that our controlled station Ebenezer had been ordered to make these contacts just at the moment when the groups which were still working at liberty had been linked up directly with one another. (I do not know all the details of how Schreieder and his section in a few days achieved the liquidation of the entire enemy MID-SOE network operating in Holland at that time.) Without doubt lack of experience and gullibility played an important part on the other side. The agents were really amateurs, despite their training in England, and they had no opportunity to work up through practice to the standard required for their immensely difficult task. Generally speaking they could not have reached the standard of a specialist such as Schreieder. Trumpet had fallen into our hands complete with signal plan, operating and cipher material. The operator Jordaan collapsed when he discovered the extent of the disaster. He was a well-educated young man of good family, perhaps not developed or tough enough for the most dangerous of the jobs known to secret service-- agent operating. But that wasn't his fault! Jordaan soon developed confidence in Huntemann and myself, and took the chance which we offered him of operating his transmitter, after we had succeeded in getting him through the nervous crisis which followed his transfer to Scheveningen. On 5th May we used Trumpet to open up a second radio link with London and passed a signal proposing a new dropping area for this group which we had found a few kilometres north of Holten. The Line of communication developed smoothly, and evidently gave London no grounds for suspicion, for the dropping area was approved shortly afterward, and we accepted the first drop there about a fortnight later. A third radio link with London was established in the following manner. The signal plan for Turnip belonging to the dead operator Maartens had been found on the person of the arrested agent Andringa. We signaled to London via Trumpet that Andringa had discovered a reliable operator who would be able to carry out Turnip's signal plan using Maarten's set, and London gave him a trial transmission so as to test the efficiency of this new recruit. The ORPO operator who took the test must have done it excellently, for the next signal from `over there' told him that he was approved. But we soon had new troubles, which worried me a lot. About the middle of May Heinrichs reported anxiously to me that he and his men suspected Lauwers of having transmitted several additional letters at the end of his last routine period. It was in fact normal to put a series of so called dummy letters at the end of signals, and his `overseer' had consequently not immediately switched of the set. His mistrust had, however, been aroused. Heinrichs could not himself be present during every transmission by Lauwers or Jordaan, and he requested urgently that the two operators should somehow be replaced by his own men. I saw the overseer concerned at once. The man declared that he did not know exactly what extra letters Lauwers had transmitted, but that they had had no meaning. The man knew quite well that any other answer could have brought him before a court for treasonable negligence, but since nothing could be proved one way or the other we had to await London's reactions. I brought in Huntemann to try and find out what had actually happened, as he was on very good terms with both the ORPO men and Lauwers. It emerged simply that Lauwers had made some of the ORPO men much too trusting, had `softened them up' as we put it. The routine periods had become much too comfortable, and the good treatment I had ordered for the operators, with coffee and cigarettes, had broadened into a friendship which was proving highly dangerous. While awaiting London's reaction, I did not tell Lauwers that our suspicions had been aroused. Nevertheless, although there were no clear indications of treachery, we soon afterward put an end to the operating of Lauwers and Jordaan by once more using the trick of proposing a `reserve' operator-- which was immediately approved. We were now in a position to bring in an ORPO man onto the key in place of either operator without London suspecting anything. The instruction and employment of reserve operators drawn from the Dutch Underground must have been quite understandable to them, as it was always possible that a mishap might occur to the No. 1 operator at any time. Profiting by these events, we did not in general use agent operators any longer. After the arrest of agents sent across later on, their sets were operated from the outset by the ORPO without any turn-over period. In this procedure we ran the risk that the `handwriting' might have been recorded in London (on a steel tape or gramophone) and that a comparison might easily give rise to suspicion. By means of touch, speed of operating and other individual characteristics of a transmission technique an experienced ear can detect the difference between different operators when on the key in exactly the same way as a musical ear can detect difference between the renderings of different masters. If the radio organization of MID-SOE had observed proper security precautions we should never have been able to introduce our own ORPO operators. But since our experience hitherto had not disclosed any special degree of watchfulness on their part we took the risk. The carelessness of the enemy is illustrated by the fact that more than fourteen different radio links were established with London for longer or shorter periods during the `Nordpol' operation, and these fourteen were operated by six ORPO men! === In the course of the spring we had amassed a considerable store of knowledge about the enemy's plans, his methods of operating and his radio and ciphering systems. With the help of this experience we could probably even have dealt with blind drops had any more taken place. If the enemy had discovered the truth at this time, he would have had to rebuild a difficult, costly organizational structure, employing entirely new methods. Even making allowance for the fact that MID-SOE had not the slightest suspicion of the true state of affairs, it is a fact that the decision to drop `by arrangement' was the chief reason for the catastrophe which followed. This arrangement, which was carried out rigidly and without variation for over a year, was the really dramatic feature of `Nordpol' amid the many other mistakes of omission and commission made by our enemy. One single control group, dropped blind and unknown to us in Holland, with the sole duty of watching drops which had been arranged, could have punctured in an instant the whole gigantic bubble of Operation `Nordpol'. This unpleasant possibility was always before our eyes during the long months of the play-back, and it kept us from getting too sure of ourselves. We could never forget that each incoming or outgoing radio signal might be the last of the operation. The decision of MID-SOE was confirmed when the period form 28th May to 29th June brought three dropping operations, for which the `reliable' groups Ebenezer and Trumpet had to provide the reception parties. The operations were: Operation Beetroot (via Ebenezer). Agents Parlevliet and van Steen dropped near Steenwijk. Duties-- to instruct in the Eureka apparatus, guiding beacons for aircraft. Radio communications in accordance with Plan Swede. Operation Parsnip (via Trumpet). Agents Rietschoten and Buizer dropped near Holten on 22nd June. Duties-- organization of armed resistance in Holland. Radio in accordance with Plan Marrow. The duties prescribed for parties Beetroot and Marrow were of such importance subsequently that I will discuss them in detail. The beetroot party was welcomed on its arrival by Underground representatives who were in fact Dutch police working for the SIPO. The arrests were made after dawn, by which time the reception party had had time to find out what the duties of the group were to be. Actually this plan broke down in the case of Beetroot, but was highly successful in all the remaining cases. On subsequent occasions we often discovered important details from the enemy's side, particularly about their secret operational intentions. For example, a single operation including the numbers under instruction, their nationality, the teaching staff, standards of ability, etc. Later on our knowledge extended into an accurate picture of the inner circle of leading personalities `over there'. === Group Parsnip, which had been dropped on 22nd June near Holten, had a normal assignment, namely, the organization of a sabotage group in Overijssel. Parsnip was consequently played back normally by the customary process of opening up communication, agreeing on dropping points and accepting drops. It was noteworthy that the operator Buizer was, on London's orders, also supposed to transmit for Potato (De Haas), Potato having previously worked through Ebenezer. Ebenezer's burden had been lightened in this way because London considered it to be the most reliable of its links and intended soon to use it for an important special task-- the blowing up of the aerial system of the Kootwijk radio transmitter. At the beginning of July London told Ebenezer to make a reconnaissance to see whether the aerial system could be blown up by demolition commando under Taconis. In a series of signals exact details were given of the method by which the whole system could be destroyed by means of small charges placed at special points along the mast anchors. I accordingly sent out a reconnaissance party of our people under Willy, who were to conduct themselves exactly as if they were members of the Underground, to find out in what way it would be possible, by day or night, to approach the aerial system, and how the operation could then be carried out. The precise state of affairs as reported by Willy was then signaled to London. We reported a rather small guard, and an inadequate watch over the surrounding area. The demolition of the anchors would not present much difficulty. London signaled back that Taconis must make his preparations in such away that the demolition could be carried out on the night following the receipt of the prearranged signal. Toward the end of July we reported that Taconis and his men were ready, and were told by London to stand by, but on no account to start anything before receiving the signal. By the time this signal came I had already thought out reasons for `failure'. Two days later Ebenezer passed the following message to London: ``Kootwijk attempt a failure. Some of our men ran into a minefield near the anchors. Explosions followed, then an engagement with the guards. Five men missing. Taconis and remainder safe, including two wounded.'' And the next day: ``Two of the five missing men returned. Three others were killed in action. Enemy has strengthened guard on Kootwijk and other stations. Have broken off all contact. No signs yet that enemy is on our track.'' London signaled back somewhat as follows: ``Much regret your failure and losses. Method of defense is new and was not foreseeable. Cease all activity for the present. Greatest watchfulness necessary for some time. Report anything unusual.'' A fortnight later London sent Ebenezer a congratulatory message for the Kootwijk party, adding that Taconis would receive a British decoration for his leadership. The medal would be presented to him at the earliest opportunity. The attack planned on the Kootwijk transmitter was clearly aimed at the destruction of the radio link by which the German Admirality communicated with U Boats on the Atlantic. When some days later the English made their landing attempt on the French coast near Dieppe we saw another reason why Kootwijk had been intended to be destroyed. Somewhat late in the day, the german Admirality hastened to carry into actuality the form of defense for the aerial system which we had conjured up in our imagination. By arrangement with IC of the Wehrmacht staff, Rittmeister Jansen, I had a reference to the Kootwijk affair published in the Dutch press. The article referred to criminal elements who had attempted to blow up a wireless station in Holland. The attempt had been a failure, and captured sabotage material had pointed to enemy assistance. The law- abiding population was warned once again against committing or supporting such acts. I hoped that my opponents in London would receive this report by way of neutral countries. A description of OPeration Marrow which follows covers the decisive phase of `Nordpol' from June, 1942 until the spring of 1943. We knew from the first conversations on the night of the drop what the tasks were which had been given in London to the leader of Marrow, Jambroes, and his operator Bukkens, in broad outline. The plans of MID- SOE, revealed by interrogation, were on a big scale which underestimated the Abwehr potential on the German side. Typical of this was the misunderstanding of the true position in Holland concerning the morale of the population. There is no doubt that the willingness of the mass of the people to participate directly or indirectly in preparations for underground warfare did not correspond with London's expectations. It was not until one to two years later that morale grew gradually more favorable toward such plans as a result of the military defeats of the Third Reich, the growing Allied superiority and repressive German actions both against the population and against the economy of the western occupied areas. By the terms of Plan Marrow, Jambroes, who was a Dutch Reserve officer, was to establish contact with the leader of the organization OD (Ordedienst) and get them to provide men to carry out the plans of MID- SOE. Sixteen groups, each of a hundred men, were to be organized all over the country as armed sabotage and resistance nuclei. Two agents from London, a group-leader-com-instructor and a radio operator, were to take over the leadership, organization, training and arming of these groups. No doubt this plan looked fine from an armchair in London. But its fulfillment was postponed indefinitely by the fact that Jambroes never met the leaders of the OD. It soon became clear to us that we could not play back Jambroes' task, because as we did know who were the leaders of the OD we would not be able to tell London what Jambroes had discussed with them-- when Jambroes himself was all the time under arrest. So we had to put it to London that the task originally assigned to Jambroes was impracticable, and take action in accordance with what we imagined to be the true state of affairs. We now proceeded to overwhelm London with a flood of reports about signs of demoralization among the leaders of the OD. The Leadership, we said, was so penetrated by German informers that direct contact with its members as ordered by London would certainly attract the attention of Germans. When the replies from London began to show signs of uncertainty and instructed Jambroes to be careful, we started a new line. This proposed that Jambroes should make contact with individual and reliable leaders from OD area groups, so as to form the sixteen groups planned by consultation with the middle and lower OD levels. Our proposal met with some objections, but was finally recognized in a practical manner by the increasing of the support through agents and material given to Group Marrow and its supposed component organizations. The build-up of the Marrow organization began in August, 1942. Naturally at no time were links established with OD groups or with their leaders. On the contrary, we assured London repeatedly that we were making use of more reliable and security-minded individuals. The development of the sixteen Marrow groups had soon made such apparent progress that between the end of September and November London sent across seventeen agents through our hands in Holland, most of whom were destined for Marrow groups. Five were operators with independent radio links. We had these five lines in working order by the end of November, operating in accordance with Plans Chive, Broccoli, Cucumber, Tomato, and Celery. Each of these five groups set to work and were soon able to give dropping points to London, which were approved and supplied continuously with materials. At the beginning of December we signaled a progress report of the existing state of the Marrow groups to London. According to this, about fifteen hundred men were under training, attached to eight Marrow groups. In practice, these training detachments would have urgent need of such articles as clothing, underwear, footwear, bicycle tires, tobacco and tea. We accordingly asked for a supply of all these articles, and in the middle of December we received a consignment in thirty-two containers totaling some five thousand kilos, dropped in four different areas in the course of one night. Our information indicated that a new party of agents had completed their training at the secret schools in England about the middle of January, in preparation for action in Holland. From 18th January to 21st April 1943 seventeen more agents were dropped by MID-SOE and met by our reception parties. This time again the majority were group leaders and instructors for Marrow and other sabotage groups. One party of two men had intelligence tasks. Another two-man party was given the task of establishing a courier line from Holland via Brussels and Paris to Spain, and a single woman agent who arrived had been given intelligence duties. The newcomers included seven operators with independent radio links. The agents supplied in the spring of 1943 fulfilled the requirements of personnel for the MID-SOE groups which had been planned in Holland. With my few assistants, I was faced with the problem of keeping London's operational maps supplied with information about the multifarious activities of nearly fifty agents, and it seemed impossible that we could keep this up for long. To meet our difficulties an attempt had to be made to get London to agree to a reduction in the number of working radio links which were now available. We accordingly proposed `for reasons of greater security' to close down some of the Marrow transmitters. These sets, we said, would form a reserve in case some of the active transmitters and their operators should be knocked out by German action. We subsequently arrived at the position where all the Marrow sets only Marrow I to Marrow V remained in operation. Although several times between the autumn of 1942 and the summer of 1943 we had reported one of our controlled transmitters as having been knocked out by German action, we had been compelled at times to operate as many as fourteen lines simultaneously. A reduction in radio traffic was essential for the one reason alone that we had a maximum of six ORPO radio operators at our disposal for handling the entire radio traffic with London, and these men were being continually worked up to the very limits of their capacity. This account of how agents were dropped direct into our arms has not yet described any efforts by MID-SOE to get knowledge of the true state of affairs in Holland. Though there was no lack of trying, these attempts never made allowance for the fact that a possibility did exist that the entire communication network and all the agents sent in were in German hands. The most noteworthy enemy attempt at control, which may perhaps have been one of a number we did not recognize as such, occurred at the time of Operation Parsley on 21st September 1942. There was little doubt that the agent who was dropped, a certain Jongelie, cover-name `Arie', had a control task. Shortly after his arrest Jongelie declared that in order to confirm his safe arrival he must at once signal to London: ``The express left on time.'' By saying this he put his SIPO interrogators in a quandary, a situation which they were meeting for the first time. I had spent the night of the Parsley operation in the dropping area, which lay a few kilometres east of Assen, and had returned to The Hague at about 0700. At nine the telephone bell roused me from my slumbers, and the head interrogator of Schreieder's section IVE informed me of what Jongelie had just said. He added that this message would apparently have to be dispatched at the first routine period at 1100. Half an hour later I was sitting opposite Jongelie in the Binnenhof. He was a man of about forty, with a broad, leathery face, who for a long time had been chief operator for the Dutch naval headquarters in Batavia. After a short conversation it was quite clear that Jongelie had developed some Asiatic cunning during his long period of service in Indonesia. With an unnaturally immobile face, he answered my pressing questions repeatedly with the statement that he must pass the message ``The express left on time'' at 1100 or London would realize that he was in German hands. Finally I pretended to be convinced. Seemingly deep in thought, I said that we would pass his message at 1100-- and then, as I suddenly raised my eyes, a gleam of triumph appeared in his. So this was treachery! At 1100 we passed the following message: ``Accident has occurred in Operation Parsley. Arie landed heavily and is unconscious. He is safe and in good hands. Doctor diagnoses severe concussion. Further report will be made. All material safe.'' Three days later we signaled: ``Arie regained consciousness for short period yesterday. Doctor hopes for an improvement.'' And the next day the message ran: ``Arie died suddenly yesterday without regaining consciousness. We will bury him on the moor. We hope to give him a worthy memorial after victory is won.'' I have related this case in detail as an example of how competent tough agents, who had been appropriately prepared in London, could easily have forced us into the position where a single treacherous report would have blown the gaff. All we could do in such cases was to pretend that the man was dead or that he had been arrested by the Germans. A series of such `accidents' would probably always have been less dangerous than the possibility of treachery. Shortly after the Arie incident London began to press us to send Jambroes, the head of the Marrow groups, back to London for consultation, Jambroes having to name a deputy to act for him in his absence. The request accorded with the man's earlier statements that after three months of preparatory activity in Holland he would be required back in England. A reference to the possibilities of Jambroes' journey was now never absent from our interchange of signals. At first we described him as indispensable due to unforeseen difficulties in the building up of the sixteen groups, and in due course we found new excuses, in which the difficult and lengthy journey by the insecure courier route into Spain played the principal part. Nineteen forty-two went by in this way. At the beginning of 1943 the requests from London for a personal report became more urgent and were now broadened to include representatives from other groups. Innumerable signals passed. London began to demand information about areas in Holland where land or sea planes could be sent to pick up couriers or agents. We were unable to find suitable areas, or, alternatively, those which we did find and reported did not suit the gentlemen `over there'-- or else we would suddenly declare them `unsafe,' whenever the organization of a special flight seemed imminent. On various occasions we reported a number of agents as having departed for France, who were expected every month to arrive, but naturally never did so. Finally we took the only course still open to us and reported Jamboes as missing [...] informing London that our investigations showed that he could not be traced subsequent to a German police raid in Rotterdam. [...] On 18th January 1943 Group Golf was dropped into Holland. Golf's duties were to prepare secure courier routes through Belgium and France to Spain and Switzerland. The group was well supplied with blanks for Dutch, Belgian, and French identity cards with stamps and dies for the forging of German passes of all kinds, and with francs and pesetas. We let about six weeks pass before Golf signaled to London that a reliable and secure route had been established as far as Paris. The courier for the Golf groups would be an experienced man with cover name `Arnaud.' In actual fact Arnaud was none other than my Unteroffizier Arno, who had effected an excellent penetration of the enemy courier routes by posing as a refugee Frenchman who made his living by smuggling jewels. We proposed to London that we should dispatch to Spain via the Arnaud route two English flying officers who were living underground in Holland in order to test the reliability of this `escape line.' Our proposal was approved, and London confirmed three weeks later that the men had arrived safely in Spain. Through this exploit, the Golf group and Arnaud acquired much credit in London, and in the spring and summer of 1943 London gave us details of three active stations of the British Secret Service in Paris which were working on escape routes. These were run partly by French and partly by English personnel and had their own radio links with London. Obviously we did not permit the German counterespionage in Paris to take action against these stations, once more adhering to the principle that intelligence is more valuable than elimination. My section under Major Wieskotter now had a clear view of the inner working of these important escape lines, made possible by the well-sponsored arrival of Arnaud in the organization by reason of a signaled recommendation by London to the stations concerned. The responsibility for innumerable captures of couriers and espionage material, of incoming and outgoing agents, and of espionage and radio centers in Holland and Belgium during 1943, inexplicable to the enemy Secret Services, must be laid at the door of MID-SOE's confidence in the Golf radio link, which had been in our hands since the day of its arrival in Holland. In actual fact Golf rendered certain services to the enemy in order to increase this confidence. We had proved once again the truth of the old saying: `give and it shall be given unto you.' Numbers of Allied flying personnel who had been shot down and had gone underground in Holland and Belgium had reached Spain after an adventurous journey without ever knowing, perhaps until the present day, that they had all the time been under the wing of the German counterespionage. === On 31st August, Queen's Day in Holland, two `Nordpol' agents, Ubbinnk and Dourlein, broke out of the prison in Haaren and disappeared. I had a short report to this effect on the morning of 1st September from Schreieder's office. Soon afterward Schreieder himself rang up in considerable agitation to give me a seemingly endless description of the measures which he had taken for their recapture. It was clear to me that, through this incident, the bottom had been knocked out of the whole `Nordpol' operation. Even if the fugitives did not succeed in reaching Spain, Switzerland or even England itself, they were at large-- though perhaps only temporarily-- and would certainly somehow record their experiences since their departure from England and get this report by some means or other back across the Channel. === During the first ten days of December London's signals became so dull and colorless compared with their usual quality that it did not need all our knowledge to enable us to guess that the enemy was trying to deceive us in his turn. Hardly any doubt remained that Ubbink and Dourlein had reached their objective. Nevertheless, we made no move, and gave not the slightest indication that we too realized that the great bubble of the agent network and radio links in Holland had finally been pricked. In March, 1944, I proposed to Berlin that we should put an end to the hollow mockery of the `Nordpol' radio links by means of a final message. I was immediately told to submit a draft for approval to Abwehr Berlin, which must express confidence in victory. Huntemann and I set ourselves to compose a message which should fulfill not only Berlin's requirements but also our reflection on the two years' hoax which we had carried out so successfully. This message, the first to be transmitted quite openly in plain language, must not in any way fall short of the standard of the thousand-odd cipher signals which had been previously dispatched. We sat at my desk and exchanged our first attempts at a suitable text in order to discover something worthy of this unique occasion. Writing rather as if we were playing `consequences', each of us composing a few sentences in turn, we finally agreed on the following: ``To Messrs. Blunt, Bingham & Co., Successors Ltd., London. We understand that you have been endeavoring for some time to do business in Holland without our assistance. We regret this the more since we have acted for so long as your sole representatives in this country, to our mutual satisfaction. Nevertheless we can assure you that, should you be thinking of paying us a visit on the Continent on any extensive scale, we shall give your emissaries the same attention as we have hitherto, and a similarly warm welcome. Hoping to see you.'' The names given were those of the men whom we knew to be at the head of the Netherlands section of SOE. We signaled this draft to Berlin for their approval. They were evidently occupied with more important matters, however, and we had to wait a fortnight until, after one or two reminders, we received permission to transmit the message without amendment. I passed the plain language text to the FuB station on 31st March, with instructions to pass it to England over all the lines controlled by us, which at that time numbered ten, the next day. It had occurred to me that 1st April might be particularly apposite. The following afternoon the FuB station reported that London had accepted the message on four lines, but had not answered calls on the other six. [...] Operation `Nordpol' was over. The attempt of the Allied Secret Services to gain a foothold in Holland had been delayed by two years. The establishment of armed sabotage and terror organizations, which might have disorganized the rear areas of the Atlantic Wall and crippled our defenses at the critical moment of invasion, had been prevented. The penetration of the Underground movement had led to the liquidation of widely spread and boldly directed enemy espionage services. The complete deception of the enemy about the real state of affairs in Holland would have subjected him to the danger of a heavy defeat had he attempted to attack during 1942 or 1943. The information which we had gained about the activities and intentions of the enemy Secret Services had contributed directly to the countering of corresponding plans in other countries. Operation `Nordpol' was no more than a drop in the ocean of blood and tears, of the suffering and destruction of the Second World War. It remains nonetheless a noteworthy page in the chequered and adventurous story of Secret Service, a story which is as old as humanity and as war itself. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help(a)anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin(a)anon.penet.fi.

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Re: anonymous video rental store - Libraries
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Out of curiousity, has any ftp-archive maintainer tried to join the American Library Association, either directly or as part of some university's library system? It would be an interesting way to start building precedents. Are there any equivalent international or non-US national library associations that take strong anti-censorship pro-privacy positions?

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More on Secure Drive/hacking case
by Mike Ingle 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I learned a few more details about this case. First of all, it's in Canada, so U.S. precedent will not be set. The suspect had been hacking, using several accounts. He requested Secure Drive using one of them, and the people investigating the hacking had the system programmed to record all keystrokes through this account. They intercepted a copy of Secure Drive as he was downloading it, but at that time they hadn't found him yet. Imagine their frustration, watching the as-yet-unknown hacker acquire a program which will make him very difficult to prosecute. The hacker also had PGP and some files, and they are looking through the files to see if they can find the key. They said the suspect seemed "particularly glib" about the Secure Drive protection. They are going to attempt to break Secure Drive. He asked me to write a program which will take a list of passphrases and test them quickly to run a passphrase attack. I had a few qualms about writing a program to crack someone's data, but I don't think it really matters. Unless the hacker chose a very lame key, they don't have a prayer in hell.

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Re: Merry Christmas, Cyberanarchists
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sending mail to anXXXXX(a)anon.penet.fi compromises your anon.penet.fi id, unless you're careful to use passwords, and if you're sending the message directly, you can switch the format to naXXXXX(a)anon.penet.fi. But, - Does the cypherpunks mailing list have any anXXXXX(a)anon.penet.fi subscribers, or is Eric careful to switch them to naXXXXX in the list? - Is there any way to tell? - If mail is forwarded, either by something like cypherpunks that patches up header lines, or by someone else (e.g. a forger, or some cypherpunks subscriber, or somebody forwarding their mail to their anXXXXX account), will that also compromise the id, or will that just compromise the id of the forwarder, if known? - How good is anon.penet.fi about checking this stuff for non-passworded users? Thanks; Bill Stewart # Bill Stewart NCR Corp, 6870 Koll Center Parkway, Pleasanton CA, 94566 # Voice/Beeper 510-224-7043, Phone 510-484-6204 # email bill.stewart(a)pleasantonca.ncr.com billstewart(a)attmail.com Anonymous-P.S.: Also thanks from an anonymous Finnish news-poster :-)

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Encryption & self-incrimination
by Mike Ingle 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Isn't there a limit as to how long they can lock you up for contempt of court? Most crimes do have a maximum sentence.

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