Steve Neal makes some very good points:
a) The possibility of some media nitwit hearing about the initial post and missing Tim's "retraction" (or ignoring it in the interests of a great big ol' byline). Nightmarish possibilities abound, particularly given the subtle nature of the "clue" in the PGP block.
I agree, which is why I ended the charade. (And I would've ended it sooner had I gotten any strange phone calls, suggesting a reporter sniffing around, or threats to report the posting to the cops. I did get a few strange messages suggesting Netcom should yank my account.) But the interesting thing is how paranoid people are about free speech being exercised (the free speech being posting of non-provably illegal material, not the posting of provably illegal material). I won't repeat my point about a nation of politically correct sheep.
However - tickling a few neurons may very well have been worth the risks noted above.
Yes, perhaps thinking about some issues in advance is a good "drill." (For some reason, I seem to gravitate toward these "early warning" situations...it was me who posted the first message about Dorothy Denning's key escrow system, last October ("A Trial Balloon to Ban Encryption?"), and I also posted the fake "Stealth Secrets" article in cypherpunks, anonymously. The intent was to test the commitment of the list to the much-talked about "whistleblowers" group and to the likey implications. (Sure enough, several people freaked out and called for censorship--as if anonymous whistleblowing can be censored! I 'fessed-up after several days, pointing out the material came from a published book and some Aviation Leak material.) Steve then makes some really excellent points:
In arguing the fine points of Dworkinism, pornography, capitalization of proper nouns, etc., I think Eric misses Tim's point, which is (I think) that the current movement of society is from
Forbidding actions that cause harm to others
to
Forbidding actions and speech that might offend others, or make them uncomfortable, or hurt their feelings.
Yes, exactly! This is a profound shift from the principles on which this country (apologies to Brits, etc.) was founded.
To those of you who think "it can't happen here", I would refer you to Canada's "hate speech" laws, which make it a criminal offense to "promote hatred against an identifiable group". To date, the only
And France and Germany have both used "hate crimes" as "hate groups" as justification to ban certain groups from existing.
well-known charges under these laws have been against couple of Holocaust revisionists; however, the definitions of "promoting hatred" and "identifiable group" are vague enough to make this country a somewhat dangerous place to have unpopular views, even disregarding the tremendous leverage this law gives governments to step on anyone who gets too far out of line.
Good points, but the so-called "Holocaust" never actually happened, hence there cannot be any such thing as "Holocaust revisionism," just the telling of the truth. While the Nazis were not perfect, this nonsense about extermination camps was just Allied propaganda (confirmed by documents declassified in 1967) designed to embarass the Nazi "Huns" and to hide the mass exodus of Jews, who stole the wealth of Germany and took it to New York to set up brokerage and banking firms like S.G. Warburg and the Rothschild Bank. Every true researcher knows this. (This little joke could be enough in Canada, as Steve points out, to at least threaten me, and perhaps the machine this message originates to the List from. Most likely not (the Canadians concentrated on long-time activists), but the _threat_ is there. And this threat is coming down to the U.S.) Understand that the real threat to the Jews in Germany was not so much hatred of the Jews (of which there was probably less in Germany than in France and other European countried until Hitler began stirring up hatred and staging events to trigger mass hatred) as it was the unbridled power of the Nazi state. Civil rights were suspended, the courts fell under the control of Hitler's people, and "law" became whatever the government wanted. Ironically, with "hate crimes" as a prosecutorial tool in the 1930s, Hitler could have used the laws to prosecute Jews (especially Orthodox Jews, with different fashion styles and a dislike ("hate"?) for many Gentiles. The real threat is the government, whatever its initial intent. They have the guns, they have the courts, they have the power. We've sunk into a strange situation in which various special interest groups jockey for special privilege, special powers granted to them by the State. "Live and let live" doesn't mean one has to _like_ all the various individuals or groups that are out there, it just means you let them do their thing as long as they don't interfere with your own life. You can't pass laws to force others to like you, or your group, or to make their thougths conform to yours. About all you can really do is make sure they can't rob and kill, and even that's iffy. --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: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it.