At 11:58 AM +0000 11/20/96, Matthew J. Miszewski wrote:
I have to agree. One of the most impressive things I have seen as a modern "movement" (yes I realize cpunks are not an organized movement, relax) was the massive public relations job done by several core cpunks around the 1993 Clipper proposal. People with largely divergent opinions found public ground in their opposition to Clipper. Lets do that again.
Thanks, but I think the opposition to Clipper was very widespread, and didn't nucleate around our group. (It is true that the "Wired" cover story hit at the right time, and that 1993 was when a lot of journalists "discovered" crypto, but it is also likely that this discovery would have happened anyway, for lots of reasons.)
[BTW, Tim, thanks for being willing to withstand the crap you go through. You, and others on this list, have consistantly challenged and changed my assumptions about society, law and privacy. I dont always agree with you. But I am glad you are here.]
The messages denouncing me--or Gillmore, or Hughes, or whomever--are easy to delete and/or filter. It is really the _list_ that is being affected, not so much _me_. And I long ago gave up on any conceit that I could control what others did to disrupt the list or did to cheapen the debate. All I can influence is what I write in my essays, and I have tried to start new threads on topics of interest to me. Some call it being phlegmatic (look it up---unlike the word, "gullible," this one is actually in the dictionary). Nietzsche called it "amor fati"--love of one's fate. Muslims and Buddhists put it in slightly different ways. Whatever, the key is to transcend monkey troop anguish and resentment over bad things said by others. For the list's sake, I dislike the childlike rants of Vulis, Aga (Grubor), Stathis, and others, just as I dislike the list-undermining megabytes of rants a few years ago by Larry Dettweiler and his various pseudonyms. But I can't stop them. So, I just filter them as best I can and get on with life. If some newbies are "taken in" by their rantings, that's life. It ain't always fair, and I can't worry too much that some newbie or some twit is convinced by such rants. Nor can I worry that some people think I must be guilty because I don't rant back at Vulis, Aga, Stathis, etc. (well, I try not to rant back...sometimes I make some comments, as I'm doing here). Not speaking for John Gillmore, but if someone is taken in by Aga's rants about Gillmore being a "BAD FAGGOT, worthy of death," then I think of it as evolution in action. Plonk. --Tim May "The government announcement is disastrous," said Jim Bidzos,.."We warned IBM that the National Security Agency would try to twist their technology." [NYT, 1996-10-02] We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."