Hello fellow Cypherpunks! I am writing this message to sincerely apologize for my past behavior over the past few weeks on this list, particularly over the last few days. I have written messages that I am not proud of. And all for nothing. I am here to tell you that your leaders have all assured me in unequivocal terms that they are not pseudospoofing in any way whatsoever and have no personal knowledge of any pseudospoofing on the cypherpunks list or anywhere else, so I now feel like an embarrassed idiot for escalating this matter to this level, when it is so obviously completely unjustified in retrospect. I realize I am the premier digital Don Quixote, chasing phantoms and jousting at windmills! The joke is on me! I have learned many things over the past few weeks. I thank you for the valuable lessons you have taught me. I was too arrogant until now to accept your wisdom with humility. Clearly, my mistake! Don't I feel stupid! I think both you and I have many things in common. We are interested in the growth of cyberspace and recognize that pseudoanonymity has awesome power, like an atom bomb. I think the difference is that I thought you were doing all you could to detonate them when you were really trying to stop them. I apologize to everyone I offended by suggesting otherwise. I think that fucking tentacle S.Boxx has demonstrated the damage that can be done with pseudoanonymity. He ought to be taken out and shot in the forehead. I would enjoy watching him stare blankly with a gaping hole in his skull and his brains and blood splattered about. In fact, I am going to do precisely that if I ever find the bastard. (His family deserves to die too, but we'll see what mood I'm in at the time). And everyone knows that he is a tentacle! Image the raw power that can come from the surreptitious use of this extraordinarly overpowering force! It is like the ultimate technique for social engineering, guerilla warfare, espionage, sabotage, and riot instigation. The evil, hard-core hackers have done well to perfect it. You are lucky that your leaders are so farsighted and astute to realize the inherently dangerous and damaging nature of its use. You have accomplished great miracles from your honorable cooperation! Although, we definitely have a new arms race with the Psychopunks in the strategic position (thank god there are none here!). I hope we can reach a detente. This is my own peace offering. Your leaders E.Hughes and T.C.May have mailed messages to my postmaster in complaint in my questions about there use of different sites. P.Metzger mailed my postmaster in regard to his mailbombing me. E.Brandt sent my postmaster and my root another letter recently asking me to stop mailing him, which was amusing considering that he initiated our conversation. I have been subject to a sendsys bomb yesterday, that came in about ~.5 meg, and a new grisly mailbomb today at ~5 meg and growing. But we can now understand that none of this is necessary. It has reached its purpose. I have achieved a serenity and tranquility with my newfound delight and euphoria. I got another anonymous and cryptic phone threat this afternoon, from who knows. ``Shot by the SWAT team. No doubt about it. GET HELP.'' This brings the total of heartfelt greetings from my dear friends to 2. And I have no idea what D.Barnes has been able to turn up in his blackmail campaign of assaulting my previous employer, the school administrators, and (more recently) stealing my resume. Yes, the cypherpunks are truly the Protectors of Privacy and the Promoters of Anonymity. They have done all this because they are concerned about my well being, and I have been an obnoxious jerk for weeks in misinterpreting their worried concern over my welfare and sanity. I have made an appointment with a therapist (it was quite a new experience for me) and I think he is going to help me through my serious psychological disorders and paranoid delusions. I apologize to subjecting you to my insanity. I am quite ashamed of it. Please tell everyone you know that I am insane and should be avoided like a leper. Some of the people I know and respect have heard you, and I thank you for helping them to realize that I am a dangerous lunatic that should be avoided. It's really the best thing for everyone. To demonstrate my sincerity, I will not post at all to any list, including the one I helped create, for a period of one week, starting now. You will not even see any new messages in the newsgroups by L.Detweiler unless they are new sendsys bombs or forgeries. I will not even touch a keyboard or go near the Internet. This was at the recommendation of your gracious leaders who are sincerely concerned for my mental health and my obvious deterioration over the past few weeks. Clearly, I have been ignoring all the best advice of my well-meaning friends to pursue fantasies. I have learned how fast one can accumulate enemies if one attacks anything that others hold dear. I committed my energies to this list for 10 months but they mean nothing because of my reprehensible intoleration for lies, especially those sent to me. I have been deluded in thinking that I can stop lies or even that they are immoral or unethical, particularly in relation to pseudospoofing. Lies are Liberating! Even if your leaders were pseudospoofing (which they have assured me in certain terms they are not) they would certainly have the right to lie to others, including their friends and followers, through their tentacles. This is not an inherently deceptive use of pseudonymity. It is similar to using different names for harmless magazine subscriptions. I sincerely apologize for attacking anyone over this issue. I was wrong to call E.Hughes or N.Szabo a `bald faced liar.' You have a right to exist in cyberspace, and use the Internet to whatever use you can imagine. And if others that are living around you in the neighborhood ask you what you are doing, and if everything is all right, and wonder about the strange noises and smells, like I did, you should tell the nosy bastards to go to hell. They deserve it. I deserved it all. That is your constitutional right to privacy, and it should extend to Cyberspace just as it does in the real world. Live and let live! I was once concerned about the possible deceptions of the Media by your cause. I now realize that the Media is inherently corrupt and should be manipulated to the Cypherpunk agenda in any way possible. In particular, we should promote ourselves as the respectable citizens we are. The public gets frightened by an image of Anarchy and Radical Libertarianism. If we promote it as Cryptoanarchy and Cypherpunks, we can get much farther. Both Markoff and Kelly, and his fantastic photographer L.Dyer, have been extremely understanding and accommodating in helping us promote our agenda among the widespread population. In fact, the NYT article was an exceptional breakthrough of emphasizing our goals of privacy and cryptography for the masses. I really liked that quote by W.Diffie, one of the world's foremost cryptographers. In my new realizations I am particularly inspired by your underlying agenda of tax evasion, black marketeering, and the overthrow of governments. DEATH TO ORDER! Hedonistic delights like gambling dens and prostitution rings would be a Love Boat for everyone, but they aren't enough. I have had some neat fantasies lately about starting new drug nextworks and assassination enterprises. What delights await us! The possibilities of untraceable cash and anonymity are truly liberating -- we can build up internation criminal organizations and launder our money freely, and avoid all detection! The vanquished world will lick our boots! I hope that you will let me in on your finetuned Cryptoanarchist secrets that would make Goldfinger and Hitler proud. If you don't, that's okay too. I'm really unstable and there's even a rumor that I'm actually an FBI agent, so that it would be better if you didn't tell me anything that would be upsetting to someone who practices law enforcement. I want to encourage everyone here to explain the history of how I reached my newfound epiphanies out in the newsgroups if possible, particularly on the `CRYPTOANARCHIST INFILTRATION ALERT'. (I won't be able to forward this because of my promise, maybe you could help me out.) Together we can attack the blasphemous heretic infidel S.Boxx so that he is completely inundated in the noise and help the world to realize the grandeur of Cryptoanarchy. I will be the new Poster Boy for the CryptoAnarchist movement. I shall promote it to my death with all my heart. I am sorry to have upset anyone who has ever watched this mailing list. I was continually prodding you to discover the truth, but there was nothing to discover! I kept telling you to send mail to your leaders yourself, to put pressure on them to reveal their knowledge, to investigate the claims of reality of identity that were extremely suspicious, and follow up past inert, passive, lifeless viewing of the text that scrolls by your faces and hypnotizes you daily, more mesmerizing and psychologically dangerous and deadly than television! But we all know that this was a delusion now, a faded dream. The list is our outlet to reach out to other real people, to make friends, to achieve grand goals. As the leaders reassure us, upon their honor as patriot Cryptoanarchists and honest human beings, there are no fake identities anywhere in all of cyberspace, and on the Cypherpunks list in particular! All my past claims are nothing but bizarre, wretched, pathetic, deluded fantasies and hallucinations. In psychology, it is called `projection'. Everyone should understand now that I am completely in favor of the entire cypherpunk agenda, and everything that E.Hughes or T.C.May or J. Gilmore says or does. They have been like three loving uncles to me, helping me to see the errors in my ways and correct my breaches in ettiquete. E.Hughes, in particular, has been the most sweetly endearing. He is so humble and gentle! His words flow like a gentle breeze or a murmuring stream. How could could I accuse anyone so honorable of lying in a serious academic journal like RISKS?! T.C.May has always answered my letters with a kind response, and J.Gilmore talked to me personally on the phone to comfort me over my anxieties. We are really just one big family with nothing but love for everyone! I now see that Cypherpunks is a fine organization and leaders on par with CPSR and EFF. I unjustly accused many human beings of not existing, like J.Dinkelacker, N.Szabo, G.Broiles, H.Finney, A.Chandler, and M.Landry. Every one of them has talked to me on the phone and told me about their wonderful lives to assure me they are real. I am really ashamed that I have ever attacked anyone associated with the cypherpunk cause. It was an atrocious violation of everyone's privacy. Please just chalk it up to my delusions of persecution. How could I have ever thought anyone here was out to get me? Ha, ha. Ho Ho. Heh Heh. Hee. Hee. BWAHAHAHAHA The prozac really IS starting to help! (I was quite a fool to be afraid of drugs before! they have been critical in relieving me of my mania, depression, psychoses, and hallucinations, particularly the LSD, but evil dancing red neoplasm orgasms are oxymoronic monsters, she corrupt hair in the treason cold washing butterfly, falls truth salad words filth below and lie trees air, but only poison on Mondays!) Before I go I would like to share some of the beatiful uplifting prose of the dear friends who helped me vanquish my insanity. At first I thought the following was some of the most evil brainwashing and vicious psychological torture that could be inflicted on a human being. I realize the grotesque errors in my ways. These are now some of my favorite quotes. I am going to read them nightly, as I pray to God to bring us all CryptoAnarchy for Christmas. I *beg* your forgiveness for my own depravities, perversions, and crimes. Above all, please do not construe my heartfelt sincerity as searingly sarcasting satire. I swear on my honor as a Cypherpunk and to our Mother Medusa that my words are genuine. As long as I am among honorable, reputable, respectable people, I would never lie. p.s. Some of this below was private email, but everyone involved has assured me they would be delighted if I quote it. ===cut=here=== H. Finney:
This is about all I can offer you in terms of evidence for Dinkelacker's independent existence. It's up to you now. You can cling to this paranoid fantasy, adding layers of elaboration, saying that I must be a false identity, Nick must be, this Max More must be (but then, who publishes Extropy? You can get back issues going back three years!), and as more evidence comes forward you just add layers upon layers.
Or you can say to yourself, do I really have any basis for believing that people are trying to mislead me in this way? Who is my best candidate for being a fake persona? Let's investigate that one in detail. Let's face the truth.
steve klingsporn <moofie@apple.com>
Larry,
You are obviously quite delisional, from your accusations of people being criminals, vehicles for criminal activity, to calling people "Darth Vader" and "Medusa." you have always been opposed to anything contrary to your own sheltered personal views, and I sincerely hope you grow up before someone seriously hurts you (I have heard discussions of this nature are brewing).
You have ostracized yourself and made yourself appear like an utter baffoon via your postings. People have made it quite clear that they don't want you poking your nose into their lives.
I have never felt any close feeling towards "Cyber" or "Cypher" anything, nor am i personally involved in any way with my roommates or their friends.
I sincerely hope you grow up and learn to examine TRUTH before making accusations that certainly could be considered libelous and slanderous.
Have a nice life, loser.
Steve Wiggam:
I've thought about why I assume your posts are noise. I seem to have decided on the basis of only a few. We had an email exchange based on one of them in which I got the strong impression you were someone who thinks on a wavelength that's too far away from mine for meaningful conversation to take place--though you seem concerned about similar issues, and you sure have energy, which I would like to admire. So, my not liking your style is sad, and my having formed that impression seemingly quickly (in retrospect) is interesting, but not too sad or interesting. I'm busy.
Something subtle, difficult and delicate that is not read is useless. Unwanted information that drowns out good information is worse than useless.
G.Broiles:
Anyway .. re the connection between people and net identities, I gotta disagree with your recent posts about it - not so much from a "what things ought to be like" perspective but from a "how things are" perspective. I think the cat is way out of the bag re the connection between personalities/identities/physical bodies, and I don't think that we're ever going back. I think it's just going to get worse. I agree that it's difficult to deal with people people who may or may not be real, and may or may not turn out to be someone you can't stand (it's perfectly plausible that S.Boxx is EH, for instance) - and don't think that's a problem that's fixable. I dunno if you've ever read any Foucault, but one of the themes that I get from his work is that the development of our idea of "identity" comes from the way that we think about medical treatment and the way that we think about punishment. The body (and the identity) is the focus of the exercise of power; I think that one of the ways that technology will change this is to make it more difficult to affect physical bodies with actual punishment. The fluidity and uncertainty of "identity" that's creating anxiety on the list will, I think, prove eventually to be freedom; EH can't punish L. Detweiler, or kick him off of the list, or spoof him, or otherwise screw around, if he can't tie you down to one account/one name/one public key/whatever. I'm completely amazed to read his recent commentary on the list in light of what he wrote to you earlier (about being kicked off the list, etc.)
There's no way to stop spoofing, cheating, or censorship (in a global sense); it's possible to work around them if you have sufficient technical skills, or the money to pay someone who does. What I'd like to do is write (and give away) the tools so that we can ALL do that; then, in a wider sense, we can talk. As long as only some people have these abilities, they will use them to the detriment of the rest.
Mike McNally:
YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO LIE TO ANYONE.
You are absolutely wrong about that. There is absolutely no law against telling lies. There is of course a distinction made when fraud is perpetrated in order to, essentially, commit theft, but your moronic attempts to portray "theft" of your oh-so-important "trust" or "faith" as equivalent to actual theft is without any basis in any system of common law.
G.Broiles:
Although it saddens me to say this, the C-punks list seems to me to be the pet project of a clique of a few people who allow others to read/post to it as long as we're sufficiently respectful of their infinite wisdom. People who write on topics uninteresting or threatening to that clique are flamed, and then criticized for responding to the flames. There are two different standards for messages - one for those posted by folks "within", and another for those "without". I think you get flamed because you've failed to kiss enough ass, not because your posts are unreasonable.
There are two sorts of posts consistently considered acceptable: posts by "insiders", whatever their topic, length, or content; and transcriptions of media interviews with those insiders. Any other post will either be flamed or allowed to die a death of quiet neglect. Substantial replies to posts by non-insiders are rare indeed.
You are among the few people whose posts to C-punks I read consistenly. The list will suffer a substantial loss if you stop posting.
Jeremy W. Porter <jerry@io.com>
All you have really done is convince people that you are crazy. I've met real human people that have commented on your apparent problem. I am truly amazed by your persistence in this apparent delusion. From the people I have met, including members of EFF, EFF-Austin, Cypherpunks, Austin-Cypherpunks, CTSA, Austin Internet Society, and a couple of other groups, I have seen several people mention that they believe that you have some sort of mental illness. I have not heard one person publicly or privately defend you or your position. In essence, you (ld231782@lance.colostate.edu) have become discredited. If you are sane, then your best bet would be to get an account from some other provider and use that for future post/email. If you toned done the rhetoric, you might even win some people over to your cause.
Of course of you really are crazy, then this will be viewed as an attack, and I will be added to your list of "Tentacles". Which really doesn't matter to me or anyone I communicate with, because you have already destroyed any credibility you once had.
H.Finney:
I have mixed feelings about the disagreement you have been having with Eric Hughes. Generally, Eric does not seem to take a very active hand with the list. He only posts once every few weeks, so I don't think he can be accused of being dictatorial. I don't know; maybe he's sending dozens of messages around behind the scenes, but I suspect that he is not applying his authority too heavily.
T.C.May
Merely seeking freedom is probably not enough. Gambling, prostitution, and easy access to drugs and other hedonistic delights may be enough, but I've seen nothing to indicate this type of "Love Boat" is being planned. Just the dreamy ideas about self-sufficiency. A commune by another name. A floating "Hog Farm," with anarchocapitalist ideology replacing Thoreau and Marx.
- people hear about widespread tax evasion by crypto-anarchists, and they get interested (for various reasons, including jealousy, anger, greed, desire for freedom). "Crypto lasing."
Governments will have a hard time collecting taxes, regulating the behavior of individuals and corporations (small ones at least), and generally coercing folks when it can't even tell what _continent_ folks are on!
Some of us believe various forms of strong cryptography will cause the power of the state to decline, perhaps even collapse fairly abruptly.
E.Hughes
The issue here is epistemology.
This is exactly like the question "Are you a liar?", to which the answer is always "no".
The usual way to break out of this 'solipsism of the dialogue' is to invoke a social mechanism, that is, ask someone else. Under a belief of widespread impersonation, however, all denials are now presumed to come from the original speaker of the first denial. Thus the solipsism of the dialogue expands to a solipsism of all dialogues.
There is no such question, as I argue above. Am I dishonest if I cannot exhibit the nonexistent?
Ask your therapist what 'projection' is.
I never stopped beating my wife, either.
J.Gilmore
My phone number is for those who I choose to give it out to. The way our conversations have been going, I'm not interested in having them over the phone.
I think that if you showed the correspondence between you and I to any impartial observer, they would agree that you are oversensitive and are reacting in ways that are not warranted by the messages.
If people think that you are becoming unstable, they are doing you a favor by asking people at your University to come talk to you. If I was in that state, I hope they would do the same (or come over and talk to me, if they were in the same town).
Your contributions to crypto discussions always impressed me over the last year or so. I hope you can get past this period of excessive suspicion.
I still haven't read the cypherpunks backlog, or current traffic, but the impression I get from talking to some folks in person is that you have gone a bit off the deep end with paranoia. Is that also your impression?
I think I'm beginning to sound a lot like any reasonable person would after being asked to continue helping you justify your fantasies. I predict that the list of people who "sound a lot like" this will continue to grow until YOU change.
I'm not interested in ongoing participation in debunking your paranoid fantasies. I don't want to spend the time.
I hope to see you on the net someday, posting useful commentary or information. Until then
``Refusal to answer is not dishonesty.'' Bye.