Re: apropos list talk and our culture
On 10/29/97 10:06 AM, Tim May (tcmay@got.net) passed this wisdom:
At 5:38 AM -0700 10/29/97, Brad Dolan wrote: "Michael Hays" is a new CBS series about a U.S. District Attorney. Last night's episode was about how a radio talk-show host incited a listener to kill a BATF agent and was brought to justice. DA convinced a jury that some things were "more important" than the first amendment.
I was just about to mention this show, in connection with the Waco incident.
I was truly disgusted by the show. None of the relative balance and realismthat "Law and Order" has, by comparison. For starters, very unrealistic. Even Freeh and Company understand the role of the First (to give them theirdue). Just plain bad writers.
I really disagree with your overall assessment, but yes it definitely wasn't in a league with L&O and the script was somewhat uneven
Some of the slimy stuff: (all quotes are rough paraphrases)
* references to Waco followers as crazies: "they seem to show up everywhere"
* a black assistant to Hayes talks about the chat rooms and online discussion groups that the "extreme right wing" people are in: "And this stuff is completely unregulated!"
these were out of line and sort of to be expected these days
* the First Amendment is seen as a minor obstacle to prosecution. Hayes congratulates his assistant at the end for finding a way around the First as a defense.
Thats not how I viewed it, I don't remeber the words, but I saw it that he was not going to 'go after' the first amendment and cautioned them about how unwise that was.
* the talk show host has apparently done nothing more than many of us havedone on this list
* he is convicted because he claimed not to have ever met the murderer, buta tearful witness (girlfriend of the murderer) says they did meet, briefly.
(No evidence is presented that the talk show host participated, supplied weapons, encouraged the murderer, etc.)
maybe I am dreaming about something else, but I think they clearly showed that he had met with the guy and was fully aware that he was a crazy and could be pushed over the line
* Oh, and to add to the sliminess, the DA's office promises the tearful girlfriend that her boyfriend will get a life sentence instead of death if she testifies, but "whoops."
definite slime
After the assistant to Hayes talks about the Net being "completely unregulated!," and after finding the "Pentium II with 48 megs of memory," I was expecting some mention of encryption. As a way to further show how evilthe online community is. But I saw no mention.
well gee maybe we should arrest everyone with a pentium/ppc and more than 16 Megs of RAM for possesion of 'cyber-terrorist' tools
I will admit to a guilty pleasure: the opening scene, where the BATF agentgets shot in the face, was delicious.
I looked at it with mixed emotions ... BATF is made up of guys and gals just like us, some good, some bad, some sheep. The problem with BATF is that their leadership sucked and the bad ones got their way. Just like years ago, when Philadelphia elected Frank Rizzo (former Police Commsisioner) mayor ... he wasn't a bad cop but ran a little rough shod over the Bill of Rights from time to time ... with him as Mayor, the Philadelphia PD went to hell in a handbasket because all his old cronies could get away with murder (often literally!) Brian B. Riley --> http://www.macconnect.com/~brianbr For my PGP Keys <mailto:brianbr@together.net?subject=Get%20PGP%20Key> "...error reading WinOS. (A)bort, (R)etry, (M)acintosh?"
At 9:30 AM -0700 11/1/97, Brian B. Riley wrote:
On 10/29/97 10:06 AM, Tim May (tcmay@got.net) passed this wisdom:
* the First Amendment is seen as a minor obstacle to prosecution. Hayes congratulates his assistant at the end for finding a way around the First as a defense.
Thats not how I viewed it, I don't remeber the words, but I saw it that he was not going to 'go after' the first amendment and cautioned them about how unwise that was.
You said in your other post this morning that you thought this was clearly not a First Amendment case. I disagree. Though the episode obfuscated the issue. Read on.
* the talk show host has apparently done nothing more than many of us havedone on this list
* he is convicted because he claimed not to have ever met the murderer, buta tearful witness (girlfriend of the murderer) says they did meet, briefly.
(No evidence is presented that the talk show host participated, supplied weapons, encouraged the murderer, etc.)
maybe I am dreaming about something else, but I think they clearly showed that he had met with the guy and was fully aware that he was a crazy and could be pushed over the line
Since when is broadcasting a radio to relevision show or writing an essay evidence of complicity in a murder, even when it "pushes someone over the line"? Is Senator Helms responsible if somebody shoots Clinton? ("Clinton had better be wearing a bulletproof vest if he visits my state") How about talk show host G. Gordon Liddy? ("Go for head shots") How about the people on this list? Am I culpable for the actions of, say, Jim Bell? If this is the criterion, all publication and broadcast will cease if the broadcaster or publisher or writer or whatever has any belief that some crazy person might hear his words and act on it. If Dan Rather knows that some crazy person watches his show and is enraged to see interracial marriages, for example, is Dan then complicit when he shows such a scene and the crazy racist commits murder? (Would it matter if Dan Rather had been witnessed personally speaking to the crazy racist?) As the "Michael Hayes" episode showed things, the radio show guy had only barely met the guy, in passing. This does not make him responsible for the actions of the guy. (I agree that the talk show guy was stupid to have denied meeting the shooter....he could have just said, "I meet a lot of people...I don't remember all of them.") (I think this was thrown in to obfuscate the basic constitutional issues, hence my earlier comment that the talk show host was apparently convicted because he lied, and not on the real issue of culpability. Bad writing. Bad law.) Lawyers talk about a "nexus." If I rant and rave on this list about taking action against the State, about defending myself in predawn ninja raids, and then someone like Bell or Vulis or Detweiler actually goes out and (allegedly) commits some crime, can I held to be a co-conspirator or a co-participant? Even if I _know_ they're crazy? If there is no nexus, no direct contact, then culpability is lost. (One defense in court I would use to the "and was fully aware that he was a crazy" point Brian raised above is "I'm not his psychiatrist...I didn't diagnose him." Lawyers are always fond of reminding witnesses that they're not qualified in certain areas, so....) Look, I disagree with the "hate speech" laws, as many free speech advocates do. (Check out what the ACLU has to say about such laws.) But the most the talk show host should have been charged with was a violation of the hate speech laws (not that I support this). Calling him a co-conspirator in a murder is ludicrous. But since I don't who on this list is crazy and who is not, and who may be arrested tomorrow or during the Thanksgiving Day Raids, I'd better shut up. --Tim May, Co-Conspirator in the Bell Case The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
At 9:30 AM -0700 11/1/97, Brian B. Riley wrote:
I looked at it with mixed emotions ... BATF is made up of guys and gals just like us, some good, some bad, some sheep. The problem with BATF is that their leadership sucked and the bad ones got their way. Just like years ago, when Philadelphia elected Frank Rizzo (former Police Commsisioner) mayor ... he wasn't a bad cop but ran a little rough shod over the Bill of Rights from time to time ... with him as Mayor, the Philadelphia PD went to hell in a handbasket because all his old cronies could get away with murder (often literally!)
The problem with the BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, for you foreigners reading this) is that it is an agency designed solely to fight contraband and smuggling. Just as organized crime gained a major foothold in America by smuggling and distributing booze (by this I mean the Kennedy Clan, of course, and some random Sicilians), so too the BATF became a standing army to fight (or take bribes from) their opponents. If the government got out of the unconstitutional (I believe) business of telling people what kind of stuff they could put in their mouths or bodies, and got out of the business of trying to micromanage the types of Second Amendment instruments they owned, their wouldn't be a need for the BATF, would there? The BATFis really an internal army, just like so many statist countries have. This is why they're getting Blackhawk choppers, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, fully automatic weapons, and access to SIGINT and COMINT resources. In conjunction with the DEA, Customs, and other such agencies. --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
I tried adding Amad3us's key to my PGP5.0 keyring, and got a dialog box saying PGP failed to add the key(s) to your keyring Is this really you correct key? What are your KeyID, fingerprint, and a keyserver that has your key? Thanks; Bill At 08:25 PM 11/01/1997 +0100, An Anonymous Poster wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- ..... Amad3us
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQCVAwUBNFt6ffKMuKFNFivhAQHagwP8DiNphzTEBFIxjMfuk0GMoTaSwY4Etjyb Q234GnFkf5iqWgRsDnNJWeiQzfli9EV+/5xA/eY80N+AQxbln6eFwkG8U9btMoqS Y7NCNwU6tDSckAOSSPOtdikZBxrNclW7ZK0ueuuHvFZGx5ciWCUBbx6bcxzphmhl bWPRWC/asbc= =I0Qy -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- mQCNAzRbd7MAAAEEAONwsEpUgiezyfP6lxBzM5SfHJS6MK12JyR09KBZp2rrW680 4vbKAO/oteftRRM1jYYaQM6pUd2Tbb9z+cSuQGr2GH9kQ0Y7bllh89E1PItj7frG ARSCbt1gbbXDXEICY8Ne1zZB7FfMt2qGVBdrKG/i2vfdZa5+n/KMuKFNFivhAAUR tCNBbWFkM3VzIDxjeXBoZXJwdW5rc0BjeWJlcnBhc3MubmV0Pg== =6dKS -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com Regular Key PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Tim May said:
The problem with the BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, for you foreigners reading this) is that it is an agency designed solely to fight contraband and smuggling.
[...] The BATFis really an internal army, just like so many statist countries have.
This is why they're getting Blackhawk choppers, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, fully automatic weapons, and access to SIGINT and COMINT resources. In conjunction with the DEA, Customs, and other such agencies.
Some argue that things have to get a lot worse before they'll get better. The media coverups and brainwashing will ensure that it has to get pretty damn bad before Joe Shmoe is going to notice anything is amiss. Perhaps to the stage that he knows a few people who have first hand experience of family members assasinated by storm-troopers "protecting" them from themselves. The BATFuckers are just one symptom. A few more major BOOMs would accelerate the trend. But just how bad is bad enough? As bad as Stalins Russia? What was it, 1 in 10 assasinated? What sort of place would this be like to live in when it gets that bad? What is the likely replacement system going to be like, what sort of government is going to arise out of that kind of mess? Would a similar system fill the power vacuum, or would we be left with a the desired anarchy. I wonder. There might be an argument for just laying low until cryptoanarchy starves the bloated cancerous growth. Amad3us -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQCVAwUBNFt6ffKMuKFNFivhAQHagwP8DiNphzTEBFIxjMfuk0GMoTaSwY4Etjyb Q234GnFkf5iqWgRsDnNJWeiQzfli9EV+/5xA/eY80N+AQxbln6eFwkG8U9btMoqS Y7NCNwU6tDSckAOSSPOtdikZBxrNclW7ZK0ueuuHvFZGx5ciWCUBbx6bcxzphmhl bWPRWC/asbc= =I0Qy -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- mQCNAzRbd7MAAAEEAONwsEpUgiezyfP6lxBzM5SfHJS6MK12JyR09KBZp2rrW680 4vbKAO/oteftRRM1jYYaQM6pUd2Tbb9z+cSuQGr2GH9kQ0Y7bllh89E1PItj7frG ARSCbt1gbbXDXEICY8Ne1zZB7FfMt2qGVBdrKG/i2vfdZa5+n/KMuKFNFivhAAUR tCNBbWFkM3VzIDxjeXBoZXJwdW5rc0BjeWJlcnBhc3MubmV0Pg== =6dKS -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
At 02:53 PM 11/1/97 -0600, Matthew Nuckolls wrote:
What's the point in distribuing your public key through the same channels as a signature? Kinda defeats the purpose. Esp since I can't verify that the given public key is indeed yours, since you're anonymous.
I don't think the message in question allows you to verify the state issued id of the key owner, but it does allow you to verify that Amad3us's message, and all similarly signed messages belong to the same person or group . I don't see any need for a key to be traceable to any specific person who is in fact some particular natural person. It seems to me that the fact the message signature is good (I didn't check it) would be tend to prove he is the owner of the key, since he can write messages with it. Who he is on his birth certificate and driver's license are beside the point. -- Robert Costner Phone: (770) 512-8746 Electronic Frontiers Georgia mailto:pooh@efga.org http://www.efga.org/ run PGP 5.0 for my public key
At 2:17 PM -0700 11/9/97, Bill Stewart wrote:
What's the point in distribuing your public key through the same channels as a signature? Kinda defeats the purpose. Esp since I can't verify that the given public key is indeed yours, since you're anonymous.
As Robert and Tim point out, the important issue is that you can tell that a posting claiming to be from "Amad3us" is or is not by the same set of authors as the previous articles by the pseudonym "Amad3us". This allows authors to create and defend "reputation capital", and allows readers ...
And several days ago someone said, basically, "Fine, but this is only needed once, and shouldn't be sent more than once...blah blah" Well, each new entrant into the "cycle" is like a first time viewer or receiver of this signature information. I'm not saying a public key block should accompany all posts--the keyservers work for that--but there is certainly no harm done. --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
Warning: The following message is apolitical.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
[snip]
I wonder. There might be an argument for just laying low until cryptoanarchy starves the bloated cancerous growth.
Amad3us
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQCVAwUBNFt6ffKMuKFNFivhAQHagwP8DiNphzTEBFIxjMfuk0GMoTaSwY4Etjyb Q234GnFkf5iqWgRsDnNJWeiQzfli9EV+/5xA/eY80N+AQxbln6eFwkG8U9btMoqS Y7NCNwU6tDSckAOSSPOtdikZBxrNclW7ZK0ueuuHvFZGx5ciWCUBbx6bcxzphmhl bWPRWC/asbc= =I0Qy -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- mQCNAzRbd7MAAAEEAONwsEpUgiezyfP6lxBzM5SfHJS6MK12JyR09KBZp2rrW680 4vbKAO/oteftRRM1jYYaQM6pUd2Tbb9z+cSuQGr2GH9kQ0Y7bllh89E1PItj7frG ARSCbt1gbbXDXEICY8Ne1zZB7FfMt2qGVBdrKG/i2vfdZa5+n/KMuKFNFivhAAUR tCNBbWFkM3VzIDxjeXBoZXJwdW5rc0BjeWJlcnBhc3MubmV0Pg== =6dKS -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
What's the point in distribuing your public key through the same channels as a signature? Kinda defeats the purpose. Esp since I can't verify that the given public key is indeed yours, since you're anonymous. -- Matthew Nuckolls mnuck@umr.edu
What's the point in distribuing your public key through the same channels as a signature? Kinda defeats the purpose. Esp since I can't verify that the given public key is indeed yours, since you're anonymous.
As Robert and Tim point out, the important issue is that you can tell that a posting claiming to be from "Amad3us" is or is not by the same set of authors as the previous articles by the pseudonym "Amad3us". This allows authors to create and defend "reputation capital", and allows readers to use the pseudonym to help evaluate their postings and read them in the context of the previous postings by that nym, regardless of which human body (or bodies) and True Name/s may be attached to the author. Without the signatures, the posting may be by an imposter trying to take advantage of the positive reputation of a nym, or trying to discredit the nym's reputation by bad postings, or just having a Good Time with a hoax. Most of the pseudonymous posters on Cypherpunks, and for that matter many of the Probably True Name posters, don't sign most of their postings, and we don't have a lot of forgeries, but every once in a while somebody will do a lot of forgery, or will target an individual, and you can know that any _signed_ posting is from someone who holds the keys used to sign previous postings with those keys. In the Name=Key=Body model of the world, somebody can get other people to verify their identity and sign for it; if you're a pseudonym, your only choices are to reveal and demonstrate your identity to someone who can sign your keys, or to just publish the keys early on and use them as needed. In particular, if you publish the key with your first posting, then you can demonstrate later that you're the poster who used that name. Thus, Checkered Daemon announced his nym with a key, and since I could find no other record of use of that name, I was willing to sign that key 0x50EC521D as his (I do use a separate key for signing nyms; I've signed them for a few other people such as Black Unicorn, some of whom I've since met in person.) You can also get similar results by posting your key fingerprint in your messages and sending the key to a keyserver, and it's a bit more compact, but for a first posting using a nym it's worthwhile to include the key. In Amad3us's case, I've only seen the posting referring to his original, and not the original itself, and it was garbled enough that I couldn't add the key to my keyring. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com Regular Key PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 2:59 PM -0700 11/1/97, Robert A. Costner wrote:
At 02:53 PM 11/1/97 -0600, Matthew Nuckolls wrote:
What's the point in distribuing your public key through the same channels as a signature? Kinda defeats the purpose. Esp since I can't verify that the given public key is indeed yours, since you're anonymous.
I don't think the message in question allows you to verify the state issued id of the key owner, but it does allow you to verify that Amad3us's message, and all similarly signed messages belong to the same person or group .
I don't see any need for a key to be traceable to any specific person who is in fact some particular natural person. It seems to me that the fact the message signature is good (I didn't check it) would be tend to prove he is the owner of the key, since he can write messages with it. Who he is on his birth certificate and driver's license are beside the point.
I think Robert really "gets" it. I have in the past been critical of some of his views, and suspected there were things about crypto and rights he just didn't get. But everything he says here is right on. - --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography - ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway." -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0 Charset: noconv iQA/AwUBNFu0tFK3AvrfAt9qEQJ10wCgwOVLTnlHyzfyPDq/Fce6O+XLz/IAn1FG lx+DYDA83N0vKdkCSvTpAD9g =W7Tc -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
participants (6)
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Anonymous -
Bill Stewart -
Brian B. Riley -
Matthew Nuckolls -
Robert A. Costner -
Tim May