At 12:59 PM -0700 11/16/97, Amad3us wrote:

Anonymous decries talk of violence on list. Understand anonymous, we are not the aggressors, we are the aggressed. It is annoying being on the receiving end of aggression especially where the aggressor is the local force monopoly and you have no recourse. Hence talk of nuking DC, and of capital punishment for criminal government officials. There is certain poetic karmic value to these expressions of annoyance. Helps spread the dissatisfaction with government.

However, the fact that criminal officials deserve punishment does not mean that any of us are interested to actually deliver that punishment. There are more efficient methods of utilising our available resources: write crypto code, hasten crypto-anarchy. Have the government collapse through lack of funding, have it's power eroded.

Just so. Hettinga seems to think I am criminally liable in case some terrorist decides to spend $10 million or so (the going rate, I hear) to buy a nuke so that he can make me happy in my, Hettinga claims, "will no one rid me of this city of pesitlence and vermin" entreaties. "As if." (to quote the GenXers) While I believe the odds are increasing that a nuclear or biological weapon will be used against the centers of oppression--Washington, New York, Tel Aviv, etc.--I certainly can't imagine any self-respecting member of Abu Nidal's team, for example, spending this kind of bread just to make Tim May happy. But people like Hettinga and Crispin believe in guilt by viewpoint, and in keeping quiet so as not to make the authorities mad. Me, my actions have been to move away from "soft targets." Even in a major nukewar with the Evil Empire, I'm 30 miles _south_ of the major targets in Silicon Valley, like the Satellite Operations Center at Onizuka/Moffet in Sunnyvale and Mountain View. (The famed "Blue Cube.") The Blue Cube is now mirrored at Falcon AFB in Colorado, and may by now even be the main site for satellite tracking. Hint: Given the prevailing winds and jet stream in this part of the world, and given the mountain range between my location and Silicon Valley, I'm almost certainly completely safe. Except from the aftereffects of a nukewar, namely, human vermin spreading out through the mountain passes trying to steal what they can. Hence my "other measures." A bio weapon is more troublesome, where I am, but I doubt any CBW agent could have toxicity to cover even those of us in fairly isolated ocean valleys. I expect one day to hear that some major world capital has been nuked or devastated with botulinin toxin. I doubt I'll be crying. (Hettinga plans to call the cops because of this comment.) --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'm wading through this queue of all this cypherpunks mail about me on a FIFO basis, when I have the time to do so... At 2:33 pm -0500 on 11/16/97, Tim May wrote:

Hettinga seems to think I am criminally liable in case some terrorist decides to spend $10 million or so (the going rate, I hear) to buy a nuke so that he can make me happy in my, Hettinga claims, "will no one rid me of this city of pesitlence and vermin" entreaties.

Criminally liable to the extent that some guys with uniforms would bang on your door someday about it, yeah, probably. Whether your lawyers could get you out of it, is a matter between your lawyers and theirs, Tim. Certainly if you show up at the door and, um, put a gun up someone's nose, you'll have a harder time arguing your case in court. :-). Besides, I think you're just doing all this to *get* that knock on the door. Which, I guess, is your own business. However, I reserve the right to criticize you about it, because, frankly, when you're not looking like you're grandstanding, you look like a loon, Tim.

While I believe the odds are increasing that a nuclear or biological weapon will be used against the centers of oppression--Washington, New York, Tel Aviv, etc.--I certainly can't imagine any self-respecting member of Abu Nidal's team, for example, spending this kind of bread just to make Tim May happy.

It's amazing how much of this I agree with. It's what I meant at the beginning, with the "soft targets" remark, before I started to tear you a new asshole for being such a yutz. Clearly, someday, some idiot is going to frag a major city on principle. Hope I'm not there when it happens. And, when it happens, I'm obviously in the wrong part of the country. :-). And, again, I don't think Abu Nidal, etc., *is* listening to you at all, Tim, but I bet in your finer moments, you hope someone like them will, and, if people *won't* pay attention to you, then you're going to get closer and closer to *making* them pay attention to you, even physically, someday. I expect that you're going to force a physical confrontation with the law, with almost the same certainty that some idiot will frag a big city someday. At this point, I'd consider it evolution in action. However, I reserve the right to call you a loon for it, Tim, because, when you talk like that, you *are* acting loony.

But people like Hettinga and Crispin believe in guilt by viewpoint, and in keeping quiet so as not to make the authorities mad.

No. I believe that you have the right to say anything you want. So do I, modulo the occasional charge of cypher-apostasy. :-). I'm not saying that you should keep your mouth shut, Tim. I'm pointing out that you're threatening a federal judge, and some people won't take kindly to that. Jim Bell is a prime example of what happens, and I'll talk about that in another post. Word to the wise, in other words. If you want to martyr yourself, it's your business, I guess. I just think it's a waste of your talents, and I think you're inspiring other people to waste their talents as well. Kind of like putting Oppenheimer or Von Braun in a trench. The war, if it ever comes at all, and, frankly, I your think delusions of impending civil war are exactly that, ain't gonna be fought, much less start, in Corrolitos, Tim. Get over it.

(Hettinga plans to call the cops because of this comment.)

That, of course, is a crock of shit, and I won't dignify it with any other response. Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/>