I support Hal's proposal that as many remailer operators as possible attempt to filter Detweiler's postings. All it will take for Detweiler to get through is one who doesn't filter, and who supports encryption, but this will still make it harder for folks like Detweiler to abuse the system. Cryptographically speaking, in a sense, there is no such thing as "abuse." That is, we can't wring our hands and ask the "authorities" to "do something." That's the old way of looking at things. The new way is to use filters, to have postage paid mailers (someday), and to have users do filtering of their own. Filtering those who "abuse" the systems we have is just part of the "reputation system" we are pushing for. A few comments on Hal's posting:
I got a lot of complaints today about copies of Tim's old "Blacknet" posting being sent to inappropriate groups:
Needless to say, it wasn't me who posted this. Ironically, I've never posted it to Cypherpunks, either. I sent it out to several folks prior to a nanotech meeting, to make some points about the impossibility of bottling up the knowledge of how to do nanotechnology (someday), and apparently one of the recipients sent it through a remailer to Cypherpunks. From there, it went out to several other lists and newsgroups. Life in the age of cyberspace. ...much stuff deleted...
Received: from handel.cs.colostate.edu by alumni.cco.caltech.edu with SMTP (8.6.4/DEI:4.41) id RAA23522; Mon, 14 Feb 1994 17:45:34 -0800 Message-Id: <199402150145.RAA23522@alumni.cco.caltech.edu> Received: by handel.cs.colostate.edu (1.37.109.4/16.2) id AA28603; Mon, 14 Feb 94 18:45:32 -0700 Date: Mon, 14 Feb 94 18:45:32 -0700 From: lawrence detweiler <detweile@CS.ColoState.EDU> To: hfinney@shell.portal.com request-remailing-to: comp.sys.ti.explorer@news.cs.indiana.edu subject: Introduction to Blacknet ...
It seems Larry is sending this posting to lots of inappropriate groups using several different mail-to-news gateways. This is a good way to get remailers shut down, which may be his ultimate goal.
This certainly seems to be the case. Detweiler is apparently devoting his entire life to this sort of nonsense. He keeps escalating the level of attack.
I call upon remailer operators to block incoming messages from Detweiler's known aliases. Thos using the slocal-based "cypherpunks" remailer perl scripts can add the following lines near the front of their maildelivery files.
# Filter Detweiler
From ld231782@longs.lance.colostate.edu file ? /dev/null From an12070@anon.penet.fi file ? /dev/null From detweile file ? /dev/null
Unless his access to the remailer network is blocked, he will be able to continue to abuse the system until it gets shut down.
Yes, things are very serious. He'll probably change remailers and will likely pick other articles from Cypherpunks he thinks will do maximum damage, either in spreading views the recipients will be shocked by, or just in using the remailers to mailbomb them and thus increase the pressure to (somehow) shut the remailers down. Should we "tone down" our speculations and scenarios? Probably too late, anyway, as Detweiler already has dozens of controversial posts he can use...the "Secrets of Stealth" post comes to mind, as well as many of the calls to arms and proposals for digital money for tax evasion. In any case, I don't think we should let his abuses stifle our free discussion of ideas and plans. That would be conceding defeat and adopting a wimp's outlook. Best that we learn to deal with it in other ways. As serious as this is, we knew this kind of concerted attack on the remailer network was going to happen eventually. My condolences to Hal and the other operators for having to face this new threat. Maybe we can learn from it and emerge stronger. --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power:2**859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.