Timothy McVeigh was found guilty on all counts today. I am not surprised. People will believe anything the govt. says, and besides, the governments lawyers were obviously more expensive than McVeigh's. This is a sad day for all anti-government haters.
On Mon, Jun 02, 1997 at 05:34:55PM -0500, bennett_t1@popmail.firn.edu wrote:
Timothy McVeigh was found guilty on all counts today. I am not surprised. People will believe anything the govt. says, and besides, the governments lawyers were obviously more expensive than McVeigh's. This is a sad day for all anti-government haters.
Yes, poor Tim Mcveigh. If he's innocent then he is one more victim of the OKC bomber. Tim May: "broken eggs and all that"
Anonymous wrote:
On Mon, Jun 02, 1997 at 05:34:55PM -0500, bennett_t1@popmail.firn.edu wrote:
Timothy McVeigh was found guilty on all counts today. I am not surprised. People will believe anything the govt. says, and besides, the governments lawyers were obviously more expensive than McVeigh's. This is a sad day for all anti-government haters.
Yes, poor Tim Mcveigh. If he's innocent then he is one more victim of the OKC bomber.
Tim May: "broken eggs and all that"
Is that the end of the story? I understand it that he can appeal, and will. - Igor.
Igor Chudov @ home wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
On Mon, Jun 02, 1997 at 05:34:55PM -0500, bennett_t1@popmail.firn.edu wrote:
Timothy McVeigh was found guilty on all counts today. I am not surprised. People will believe anything the govt. says, and besides, the governments lawyers were obviously more expensive than McVeigh's. This is a sad day for all anti-government haters.
Yes, poor Tim Mcveigh. If he's innocent then he is one more victim of the OKC bomber.
Tim May: "broken eggs and all that"
Is that the end of the story? I understand it that he can appeal, and will.
- Igor.
Do you honestly think it will work? don't hold your breath.
Igor writes:
Is that the end of the story? I understand it that he can appeal, and will.
One of the major flaws of the Criminal Justice System in this country is that one can only appeal based on procedural issues. No one, after a trial has concluded, may ever challenge the trial verdict. They may only argue that the proper ritual was not followed, and higher courts are very reluctant to disagree with the actions of lower courts, preferring instead to state that the errors committed would likely not have affected the outcome. It gets even worse than that. Many states, Texas amongst them, have a time limit for the introduction of new evidence after a trial, even if it completely exonerates the defendent, and are prefectly willing to execute someone as long as they have been given "due process," even if it has been clearly demonstrated that they are not guilty. Thus the Sheeple are led by their politicians to ridicule the numerous often-frivilous appeals defendents engage in, irrespective of the fact that frivilous appeals are the only ones allowed under law, the defendant having no right at all to suggest that twelve Sheeple being performed for by the local prosecutor produced something other than a Biblically inerant verdict. McVeigh therefore has no chance at all at getting another hearing on the facts of the case. He might claim that the confidential attorney/client work product stolen from the defense team computer on the eve of the trial and touted in papers nationwide as a "confession" poisoned the jury pool. But even that has little luck at succeeding. The only difference between Tim McVeigh and Richard Jewell is that the government stopped the hatchet job on Jewell in midstream. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd@netcom.com $ via Finger. $
Mike Duvos wrote:
Igor writes:
Is that the end of the story? I understand it that he can appeal, and will.
One of the major flaws of the Criminal Justice System in this country is that one can only appeal based on procedural issues. No one, after a trial has concluded, may ever challenge the trial verdict. They may only argue that the proper ritual was not followed, and higher courts are very reluctant to disagree with the actions of lower courts, preferring instead to state that the errors committed would likely not have affected the outcome.
This is yet another example of the result of taking the consitution too literally. The English common law idea of trial by ones peers somehow gets transmogravated into the peculiar idea that ones peers will produce an infallible verdict. Generaly the idea of trial by ones peers has been read as a protection for the defendant and that it is open to the government to grant a new trial if they chose. Appeals based on new evidence are not a matter of course in the UK but they are not unusual either. One of the ironies of the Maguire 7 and Birmingham 6 cases was that despite being widely reported in the US as miscarriges of justice no mention was made of the fact that in the US there would be no legal recourse whatsoever. Even if it was proven beyond doubt that the evidence on which the conviction was based was fraudulent there could be no appeal on that basis.
It gets even worse than that. Many states, Texas amongst them, have a time limit for the introduction of new evidence after a trial, even if it completely exonerates the defendent, and are prefectly willing to execute someone as long as they have been given "due process," even if it has been clearly demonstrated that they are not guilty.
The trial was federal so the federal proceedures would apply.
The only difference between Tim McVeigh and Richard Jewell is that the government stopped the hatchet job on Jewell in midstream.
One other difference, Jewell saved lives by warning people of a bomb and McVeigh murdered 167 by planting one. A small detail perhaps in the eyes of militia appologists anxious to find any possible reason to maintain their fantasy world. Again why the sudden concern for the mechanisms of justice when one white guy is found guilty of murdering 167 people? Phill
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <339381FA.2781@ai.mit.edu>, on 06/02/97 at 10:31 PM, Hallam-Baker <hallam@ai.mit.edu> said:
Again why the sudden concern for the mechanisms of justice when one white guy is found guilty of murdering 167 people?
Because it is all an evil white conspiracy. We are all out to get you, to enslave, humiliate, and degrade you. This is not done out of hate but sheer boredom. Ruling the world is not all that it's cut out to be. - -- - --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html - --------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: cp850 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBM5ORrY9Co1n+aLhhAQGo6AP/Q0m/OKYkJMmG1qtboq79Cy3wBqme8QkX ociZs4u4YzygS31/wt8ffTgqNpMZ7E36UUY7S3hLopxp+QPBHVIr2KK7k0pzleRj tkSzOwEWmHESxsP/fBRBPTR7tBvReIC+tVA2jKgYk55Go8KVeECjB00TsPF51p1T OX1XykHiu1I= =AlhG -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Anonymous wrote:
On Mon, Jun 02, 1997 at 05:34:55PM -0500, bennett_t1@popmail.firn.edu wrote:
Timothy McVeigh was found guilty on all counts today. I am not surprised. People will believe anything the govt. says, and besides, the governments lawyers were obviously more expensive than McVeigh's. This is a sad day for all anti-government haters.
Yes, poor Tim Mcveigh. If he's innocent then he is one more victim of the OKC bomber.
I'm surprised at the concern. After all I've not noticed militia supporters and appologists speaking out against the death penalty. If one is driving away from the scene of the biggest single terrorist incident on US soil one is probably well advised to both have license plates on the car and not be carrying unlicensed firearms. If one is arrested its probably not advisable to counter interrogation by refusing to give more than name rank and serial number, a request to see a lawyer is probably a more sensible choice. The one problem I have with the trial is the leaking of the defense notes. I suspect that they are genuine and that McVeigh really did confess. In the UK publication would be barred for the duration of the trial and heavy jail sentences imposed since the right to a fair trial is considered a reasonable justification for a temporary bar on the right to free speech. However I would not argue that the trial be halted as a result since one possible explanation is that the defense saw that there was no chance of aquital and gambled on gaining a mistrial. $10 million for 5 days of defense evidence tends to suggest that there was not much evidence to show. Appologists for McVeigh should consider that his actions did not advance the militia cause an iota, it destroyed it and along with it much of the right wing fringe. It forced Rush Limbaugh off television and many right wing hosts off radio. The sympathy shown for the bomber's motives made the country aware that it did not share the anti-government sentiment. Clinton's poll recovery dates precisely from the moment of the Oaklahoma bomb. If you read the propaganda being generated durning the budget impasse its pretty ovbvious that Clinton was successful in portraying Newt as a legislative version of McVeigh, Newt had of course alligned himself with the most extreme of the talk show hosts Liddy and Limbaugh when he became speaker. McVeigh ripped the heart out of the militia movement, he demonstrated what it was really about. Ironically the Oaklahoma bombing may have had precisely the effect McVeigh desired but in a very different sense. It was a wake up call to defend the country from fascism but the fascist threat was McVeigh and the millitia movement. The millitia movement have only two possible scripts at this point and one might well be denied them. They can either admit the nature of their cause and claim McVeigh as a martyr, this probably guarantees them extinction but then again Hitler recovered from the beer hall putsch. Alternatively they can loudly claim that McVeigh was "framed" in the same way that other neo-NAZIs on the net claim the holocaust a fake, i.e. so that nobody really believes it. I suspect that this script will be denied them because it would require McVeigh to go to the execution chamber proclaiming his innocence and this is something he has curiously failed to do so far. I'm not a trained psychologist but my experience in this area suggests that a claim of responsibility and publication of some document that serves as a political manifesto is very likely. It an ego thing... Phill
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <3393682D.167E@ai.mit.edu>, on 06/02/97 at 08:41 PM, Hallam-Baker <hallam@ai.mit.edu> said:
Anonymous wrote:
On Mon, Jun 02, 1997 at 05:34:55PM -0500, bennett_t1@popmail.firn.edu wrote:
Timothy McVeigh was found guilty on all counts today. I am not surprised. People will believe anything the govt. says, and besides, the governments lawyers were obviously more expensive than McVeigh's. This is a sad day for all anti-government haters.
Yes, poor Tim Mcveigh. If he's innocent then he is one more victim of the OKC bomber.
I'm surprised at the concern. After all I've not noticed militia supporters and appologists speaking out against the death penalty.
If one is driving away from the scene of the biggest single terrorist incident on US soil one is probably well advised to both have license plates on the car and not be carrying unlicensed firearms. If one is arrested its probably not advisable to counter interrogation by refusing to give more than name rank and serial number, a request to see a lawyer is probably a more sensible choice.
The one problem I have with the trial is the leaking of the defense notes. I suspect that they are genuine and that McVeigh really did confess. In the UK publication would be barred for the duration of the trial and heavy jail sentences imposed since the right to a fair trial is considered a reasonable justification for a temporary bar on the right to free speech. However I would not argue that the trial be halted as a result since one possible explanation is that the defense saw that there was no chance of aquital and gambled on gaining a mistrial.
$10 million for 5 days of defense evidence tends to suggest that there was not much evidence to show.
Appologists for McVeigh should consider that his actions did not advance the militia cause an iota, it destroyed it and along with it much of the right wing fringe. It forced Rush Limbaugh off television and many right wing hosts off radio. The sympathy shown for the bomber's motives made the country aware that it did not share the anti-government sentiment. Clinton's poll recovery dates precisely from the moment of the Oaklahoma
bomb. If you read the propaganda being generated durning the budget impasse its pretty ovbvious that Clinton was successful in portraying Newt as a legislative version of McVeigh, Newt had of course alligned himself with the most extreme of the talk show hosts Liddy and Limbaugh when he became speaker.
McVeigh ripped the heart out of the militia movement, he demonstrated what it was really about. Ironically the Oaklahoma bombing may have had precisely the effect McVeigh desired but in a very different sense. It was a wake up call to defend the country from fascism but the fascist threat was McVeigh and the millitia movement.
The millitia movement have only two possible scripts at this point and one might well be denied them. They can either admit the nature of their cause and claim McVeigh as a martyr, this probably guarantees them extinction but then again Hitler recovered from the beer hall putsch. Alternatively they can loudly claim that McVeigh was "framed" in the same way that other neo-NAZIs on the net claim the holocaust a fake, i.e. so that nobody really believes it. I suspect that this script will be denied them because it would require McVeigh to go to the execution chamber proclaiming his innocence and this is something he has curiously failed to do so far. I'm not a trained psychologist but my experience in this area suggests that a claim of responsibility and publication of some document that serves as a political manifesto is very likely. It an ego thing...
That's right Phil you can sleep better now that all the evil millitia have been distroyed. I'm sure you woun't mind when the Constitution is gone too. Nothing to worry about after all you have Bill Clinton and his buddies to make sure your safe. They said they would and they would never lie. I'm sure if you were in Germany during the 30's that you would have thought the "Jewish Solution" was a good thing after all the government said it was. Or perhaps you would have felt more comfortable in Russia at the same time when Stalin was trying to outdo Hitler in mass murders. After all it was the government doing the murders so it must be ok. They said it was and they wouldn't lie would they? That's ok Phil 1 little white boy will fry in the electric chair. But just maybe your children will never have to know what it's like to live under a Hitler or a Stalin because there are some in this country who are willing to standup to the STATEST in DC who if given the chance will enslave us all. - -- - --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html - --------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: cp850 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBM5OYhY9Co1n+aLhhAQHXpgQAqel2wojocEVBvorkFOB7laazTnSWiUpb uKDnS1JZpVTnuO12dTgtAlbCHdolBqQ3DexfpArOygc+i+y3ZgTsDYpWTxkQkHLG a0cW0OXKID+8IT/Vkx3epjMDdTcudLI6tInH/gwpGO6D/ELhisXzWglahrk2dU+P WTXXrNdO3f8= =ZPQq -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Yes, poor Tim Mcveigh. If he's innocent then he is one more victim of the OKC bomber.
I'm surprised at the concern. After all I've not noticed militia supporters and appologists speaking out against the death penalty.
Tim McVeigh certainly acted for the right reasons. This does not make him any less guilty, he killed innocent children in that building (no, I`m not subscribing to the "save the children!" mentality, and do not believe that an innocent childs life is more valuable than that of an innocent adult, merely noting that as children they could not have been guilty of acts of agression against McVeigh or anyone else because they were under the age of criminal responsibility), if we were to say he were any less guilty we would be allowing ourselves to believe in thoughcrime, and not judging the overt act. Whether McVeigh himself did it or not is questionable, I believe he did, this is just a gut feeling, no jury should have convicted him on the pathetic collection of circumstantial evidence presented.
If one is driving away from the scene of the biggest single terrorist incident on US soil one is probably well advised to both have license plates on the car and not be carrying unlicensed firearms.
Of course, but stupidity does not signify guilt. McVeigh almost seemed to WANT to be caught, this is backed up by the fact that he has right wing militia literature in his car at the time of his arrest.
If one is arrested its probably not advisable to counter interrogation by refusing to give more than name rank and serial number, a request to see a lawyer is probably a more sensible choice.
McVeigh certainly didn`t make the smart choice, but he made the right choice, he was at war with the US government, name rank and number were all he was obliged to release.
The one problem I have with the trial is the leaking of the defense notes. I suspect that they are genuine and that McVeigh really did confess.
I personally feel the same, McVeigh pleading not guilty suprised me, he originally planned a suicide attack I believe, which would lead me to suggest he would not later back down from his actions like that.
In the UK publication would be barred for the duration of the trial and heavy jail sentences imposed since the right to a fair trial is considered a reasonable justification for a temporary bar on the right to free speech.
In the UK anything is considered reasonable justification for restrictions on free speech, there are draconian restrictions on the freedom of the press. Of course, freedom of speech is absolute, if you believe a few rags printing allged defense notes will affect a prosecution you are probably right, that does not make censorship acceptable.
However I would not argue that the trial be halted as a result since one possible explanation is that the defense saw that there was no chance of aquital and gambled on gaining a mistrial.
The defense is a joke, but what do you expect? Whether McVeigh did it or not, the government wants someone to blame and McVeigh is the idea target, an anti-government "evil terrorist" to parade in front of the media.
Appologists for McVeigh should consider that his actions did not advance the militia cause an iota, it destroyed it and along with it much of the right wing fringe. It forced Rush Limbaugh off television and many right wing hosts off radio.
Indeed, McVeigh has harmed the cause of freedom. Quite the opposite of his intentions.
McVeigh ripped the heart out of the militia movement, he demonstrated what it was really about. Ironically the Oaklahoma bombing may have had precisely the effect McVeigh desired but in a very different sense. It was a wake up call to defend the country from fascism but the fascist threat was McVeigh and the millitia movement.
Of course, if the militia movement were to have any effect a concentrated effort or even a few bombings killing only government employees would have been a better course of action.
recovered from the beer hall putsch. Alternatively they can loudly claim that McVeigh was "framed" in the same way that other neo-NAZIs on the net claim the holocaust a fake, i.e. so that nobody really believes it. I suspect that this script
The militias would be better to disown McVeigh and condemn his alleged actions because he killed innocents. Datacomms Technologies data security Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"
(The airlines claim the FAA is requiring traveller identity. Maybe yes, maybe no.
Traveler ID is not 'required', however if you don't possess a government issued ID and/or have paid for your ticket via cash within 48 hours of departure expect some delays in your travel and a through search of your baggage.
Any extension to further "position escrow" (which is what I call the increasing requirements that citizen-units report their identities when travelling) would, as I understand the Constitution, violate various freedoms to move about with government interference.)
These are the serious issues.
Yes, they are and the Feds are tip-toeing around the matter ever so lightly so as not to have the ACLU on their case. --Steve
I believe this is a bad policy, and think it should be opposed. Perhaps a law should be considered to change this. But obviously many people here would tell me I could just take another mode of transportation, such as riding the bus. Airlines are private corporations owned by their owners, not by their riders. The airlines apparently have a right (as Delta is doing) of demanding any prerequisite they wish for travel. In the case of Delta, the prerequisite is "May I see your papers, please?" [snip] I'm curious where the people here stand on such a policy. Do you feel that positive ID to fly on a plane should be permissable? How about a law to put a stop to it?
It is illegal to present forged government identification for matters involving goverment business or commercial business regulated by federal laws requiring such ID (e.g., purchase of cigarettes), but should it be illegal to present forged government IDs in other circumstances when no government regulation requires their presentation (the points regarding contractual agreement not withstanding)? I agree that airlines should be able to condition travel based on requisite identification, but I believe I should be able to present forged identifiction with no possibility of criminal presecution. --Steve PGP mail preferred Fingerprint: FE 90 1A 95 9D EA 8D 61 81 2E CC A9 A4 4A FB A9 Key available on BAL server, http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~bal/pks-toplev.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Schear | tel: (702) 658-2654 CEO | fax: (702) 658-2673 First ECache Corporation | 7075 West Gowan Road | Suite 2148 | Las Vegas, NV 89129 | Internet: azur@netcom.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- I know not what instruments others may use, but as for me, give me Ecache or give me debt. SHOW ME THE DIGITS!
The defense is a joke, but what do you expect? Whether McVeigh did it or not, the government wants someone to blame and McVeigh is the idea target, an anti-government "evil terrorist" to parade in front of the media. Just like Phil Zimmerman, someone screws the government back, and they
point the finger at anyone.
On Tue, 3 Jun 1997, Paul Bradley wrote:
Tim McVeigh certainly acted for the right reasons. This does not make him any less guilty, he killed innocent children in that building (no, I`m not subscribing to the "save the children!" mentality, and do not believe that an innocent childs life is more valuable than that of an innocent adult, merely noting that as children they could not have been guilty of acts of agression against McVeigh or anyone else because they were under the age of criminal responsibility), if we were to say he were any less guilty we would be allowing ourselves to believe in thoughcrime, and not judging the overt act.
There are those who would say that since the day care center catered to employees of the building, etc. McVeigh didn't make a mistake there, as reprehensible as that part of it was. A better question, and a bigger issue is this: what plausible explanation was given for the lack of BATF agents in the building on that day? Could it be that they knew about the attack? If they did, why did they allow it to happen, thus killing those kids in the day care center. If they did, we know who the true criminals are. But this is a good question. Will we ever know the truth? IMHO, If McVeigh did what he did, frying or lethal injection is acceptable, he decided to take an action that would potentially cost him his life, gambled and lost. Like all terrorists, the price of killing many is the price of being killed. Etc. It's a fair trade from one point of view (though my money says he's shitting bricks right now), unfair from the victim's point of view. On one had we have the "faceless" evil governmet that McVeigh and Co. are against. On the other we have the day care center and media fodder, etc. Somewhere in between lies reality. What happens in the future and what results come out of this are yet unknown. Many threads of action by Uncle Sam are possible, unfortunaly, he's likely to have forced the "faceless" evil ones to be yet even more fascist and restrictive, which in turn would fuel the next set of terrorist activities, and the impending revolution the militia is seeking. Let's see what happens. The unfortunate truth is that people will not put up with fascist behavior for very long. They may call for it to the point of a military state citing crime statistics, unsafety and such... But at one point you'll see them scream "freedom" and grab the nearest weapon - be it a tree branch or an A1 Abrams tank. :) And that is something America once knew - now, it knows "let's legislate the fuck out of the sheeple. More laws. This should be illegal" Or advertisements for things like circuses that say "This much fun should be illegal" illustrate the point. Life sucks. Death sucks even more. =====================================Kaos=Keraunos=Kybernetos============== .+.^.+.| Ray Arachelian | "Boy meets beer. Boy drinks Beer, |./|\. ..\|/..|sunder@sundernet.com| Boy gets another beer!" |/\|/\ <--*-->| ------------------ | |\/|\/ ../|\..| "A toast to Odin, | For with those which eternal lie, with |.\|/. .+.v.+.|God of screwdrivers"| strange aeons, even death may die. |..... ======================== http://www.sundernet.com =========================
A better question, and a bigger issue is this: what plausible explanation was given for the lack of BATF agents in the building on that day? Could it be that they knew about the attack? If they did, why did they allow it to happen, thus killing those kids in the day care center. If they did, we know who the true criminals are. But this is a good question. Will we ever know the truth?
We may speculate, we may even know the truth. The government however won`t allow a small thing like truth to stand in their way.
IMHO, If McVeigh did what he did, frying or lethal injection is acceptable, he decided to take an action that would potentially cost him his life, gambled and lost.
Yes, he is guilty of murder and I would favour torturing him to death slowly, this is not emotional reactionism, merely a desire for justice and fair punishment. As I have said, I personally believe McVeigh was guilty, this does not make it so, and no jury in the world should have convicted him on what was presented.
Like all terrorists, the price of killing many is the price of being killed. Etc. It's a fair trade from one point of view (though my money says he's shitting bricks right now), unfair from the victim's point of view.
A fairly natural reaction, McVeigh will suffer the most if he is executed, I would imagine that unless you are a deeply religious person the knowledge of your impending death is indeed terrifying. I recall a near miss I had in a car a while ago, I thought I was going to hit an oncoming car and be killed, only lasted about 10 seconds, if that, yet it was the most terrifying experience of my life, going through than for weeks or months is indeed a fitting punishment if he is guilty.
Life sucks. Death sucks even more.
Indeed, sometimes in very dark moments I do believe being dead might be more fun <g>, less to worry over, but the will to self destruction is surrender. Datacomms Technologies data security Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"
On Wed, 4 Jun 1997, Paul Bradley wrote:
Yes, he is guilty of murder and I would favour torturing him to death slowly, this is not emotional reactionism, merely a desire for justice and fair punishment.
You do not know for a fact if he is guilty of murder. You only know that he was judged guilty. Whatever the truth is, you and I, and everyone else discussing this, cannot know. McVeigh himself knows if he did it. Witnesses (if any) would also know. This is all speculation. If indeed he is guilty, it's a fair trade. X number of lives for his own, for his cause, etc. IMHO justice is what you make of it. Were you in any way affected by his actions? Did you lose relatives in that bombing? Personally, I didn't. I don't call for slow torture because to me, it isn't justice or injustice. I was not affected by his actions. If he did set off the bomb, life in death, or execution is a valid punishment. I do question your reasoning for calling for torture though. How is that fair punishment and justice? =====================================Kaos=Keraunos=Kybernetos============== .+.^.+.| Ray Arachelian | "Boy meets beer. Boy drinks Beer, |./|\. ..\|/..|sunder@sundernet.com| Boy gets another beer!" |/\|/\ <--*-->| ------------------ | |\/|\/ ../|\..| "A toast to Odin, | For with those which eternal lie, with |.\|/. .+.v.+.|God of screwdrivers"| strange aeons, even death may die. |..... ======================== http://www.sundernet.com =========================
Yes, he is guilty of murder and I would favour torturing him to death slowly, this is not emotional reactionism, merely a desire for justice and fair punishment.
You do not know for a fact if he is guilty of murder. You only know that he was judged guilty. Whatever the truth is, you and I, and everyone else discussing this, cannot know. McVeigh himself knows if he did it. Witnesses (if any) would also know. This is all speculation.
I thought in my post I qualified that statement with a "If he did it" line, whatever, it doesn`t really matter, the government will always find someone to blame. From now on, in this thread, asssume McVeigh == "McVeigh, if he did it"
Personally, I didn't. I don't call for slow torture because to me, it isn't justice or injustice. I was not affected by his actions. If he did set off the bomb, life in death, or execution is a valid punishment. I do question your reasoning for calling for torture though. How is that fair punishment and justice?
I don`t really judge it in terms of punishment or as justice or as "fair trade". McVeigh took an extreme criminal act of agression against innocent people, I believe that implicit in that act (once proven) is the removal of his rights, that includes the "right not to be tortured" <tm>. I was not directly affected by his actions, and I`m not at all affected by images of death and destruction anyway, I don`t hate McVeigh, I don`t have any personal grudge against him or need to see him punished, I merely recognise that he has surrendered his rights, any punishment is acceptable, whether it is fitting or not is a different thread. The only reason I have any reservations whatsoever about the death penalty in this particular case is because, although I personally believe McVeigh is guilty, there was enough reasonable doubt to get a not-guilty verdict. Datacomms Technologies data security Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"
On Tue, Jun 03, 1997 at 06:43:10PM +0000, Paul Bradley wrote: [...]
McVeigh ripped the heart out of the militia movement, he demonstrated what it was really about. Ironically the Oaklahoma bombing may have had precisely the effect McVeigh desired but in a very different sense. It was a wake up call to defend the country from fascism but the fascist threat was McVeigh and the millitia movement.
Of course, if the militia movement were to have any effect a concentrated effort or even a few bombings killing only government employees would have been a better course of action.
*Any* such violence on the part of militia movements will only generate sympathy for the victims, and harm the movement more than it helps.
recovered from the beer hall putsch. Alternatively they can loudly claim that McVeigh was "framed" in the same way that other neo-NAZIs on the net claim the holocaust a fake, i.e. so that nobody really believes it. I suspect that this script
The militias would be better to disown McVeigh and condemn his alleged actions because he killed innocents.
But they won't, because they are pathetic insects drawn to the candle flame of violence. Contrast that with the brilliance of the anarchist Eward Abbey in "The Monkey Wrench Gang", where the anti-government acts were calculated to call forth popular support. -- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html
At 10:15 PM -0700 6/3/97, Bill Frantz wrote:
At 4:50 PM -0700 6/3/97, Kent Crispin wrote:
Contrast ["milita violence"] with the brilliance of the anarchist Eward Abbey in "The Monkey Wrench Gang", where the anti-government acts were calculated to call forth popular support.
I enjoyed "The Monkey Wrench Gang" immensely, but I'm not convinced Abbey captured the popular sentiment very well. Blowing up the dam they planned to hit would have doubtless produced the same maudlin images we see of OKC victims. Dead babies washed up in the debris along the Colorado River and all. CNN would love it.
This is an important point. When you kill people, you make implacable enemies. Consider the SF Bay area rescue team that is still trying to
^^^^^^^^^^^^
learn how to live with the memory of the mangled bodies they found Oklahoma ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ City. They hate the person(s) responsible for the bombing and they did not even have relatives killed there.
To cement my politically incorrect images, I think it clear that most of these so-called "traumatized" teams are made more traumatized by all the mental health care professionals and Marin County social workers _telling them_ they should be traumatized! "Grief counseling" is a big business. Surely what they saw at OKC, person for person, was not substantially different from what they saw prying squashed bodies out of the freeway collapse in Oakland? Or of what rescue workers have seen in refinery explosions, mine collapses, dam busts (there goes that monkey wrench gang again), floods, fires, and countless war experiences. But it makes for a nice piece on CNN to interview the traumatized rescue worker and ask him much longer his "grief disability" insurance will last. I don't mean to "hurt their feelings" (as if any of them are reading the Cypherpunks list!!!) but enough is enough. They shouldn't be in rescue work if a building collapse is going to freak them out so much. --Tim May There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
At 11:43 AM -0700 6/3/97, Paul Bradley wrote:
Whether McVeigh himself did it or not is questionable, I believe he did, this is just a gut feeling, no jury should have convicted him on the pathetic collection of circumstantial evidence presented.
Count me as one who believes the evidence was overwhelming. Unlike the OJ trial, which I found myself drawn into on a daily basis, I ignored this whole thing as much as possible (not for ideological reasons...it just didn't seem interesting to me). From what I did hear of it, the evidence that he did it was positively convincing. I've said I could understand McVeigh's motives, not that I think he was right in doing it, and not that I think he should escape punishment or be shown mercy. There are big differences in all of these issues. I don't see the McVeigh issue as one where we need to get into a pissing contest. He blew up the building, he got caught, he got convicted, and now he'll spend another $15 million of our money appealing his conviction for the next several or more years. Time to move on. What I think we can mostly all agree on are the civil liberties issues involved in the aftermath of the OKC case, the Atlanta bombing, and the TWA explosion. The demands for travel documents, the calls for limits on bomb-making instructions, etc. These are clearly unconstitutional if required by the government. (The airlines claim the FAA is requiring traveller identity. Maybe yes, maybe no. The airlines are profitting from the requirement, for the reasons we've discussed here before. Any extension to further "position escrow" (which is what I call the increasing requirements that citizen-units report their identities when travelling) would, as I understand the Constitution, violate various freedoms to move about with government interference.) These are the serious issues. --Tim May There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
On Tue, 3 Jun 1997, Tim May wrote:
I don't see the McVeigh issue as one where we need to get into a pissing contest. He blew up the building, he got caught, he got convicted, and now he'll spend another $15 million of our money appealing his conviction for the next several or more years.
Yes, but that's $15M less tax payer dough the evil Uncle can use to build stealth bombers, nukes, or buy hard drives to store surveilance on. :) I'd rather have it "wasted" on him than on NSA spook salary, wouldn't you? For that, he is to be commended. (IMHO, he should have used that Ryder truck on Vulis's apt building, but that's a given. :-) =====================================Kaos=Keraunos=Kybernetos============== .+.^.+.| Ray Arachelian | "Boy meets beer. Boy drinks Beer, |./|\. ..\|/..|sunder@sundernet.com| Boy gets another beer!" |/\|/\ <--*-->| ------------------ | |\/|\/ ../|\..| "A toast to Odin, | For with those which eternal lie, with |.\|/. .+.v.+.|God of screwdrivers"| strange aeons, even death may die. |..... ======================== http://www.sundernet.com =========================
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 10:44 PM 6/4/97 -0700, Steve Schear wrote:
(The airlines claim the FAA is requiring traveller identity. Maybe yes, maybe no.
Traveler ID is not 'required', however if you don't possess a government issued ID and/or have paid for your ticket via cash within 48 hours of departure expect some delays in your travel and a through search of your baggage.
In the Atlanta airport, positive gov't issued picture ID is required to be able to board an airplane for Delta, the main carrier, and about the only airline I fly. I have medallion level friends who have been refused the ability to board because they did not have picture ID on them. Stories include no travel with temporary, non-picture driver's licenses, having to go home to get the license, having a license fedex'ed to the destination city in order to board to get home, and reticketing on another airline that will accept a company ID. Cash has nothing to do with it. Business travel from repeat customers paid by American Express and ticketed through corporate travel agencies (American Express Travel) still have the ID requirement. As far as I know, all Atlanta airline departures require picture ID, though at least one airline will consider a company ID if pressed. I believe this is a bad policy, and think it should be opposed. Perhaps a law should be considered to change this. But obviously many people here would tell me I could just take another mode of transportation, such as riding the bus. Airlines are private corporations owned by their owners, not by their riders. The airlines apparently have a right (as Delta is doing) of demanding any prerequisite they wish for travel. In the case of Delta, the prerequisite is "May I see your papers, please?" I believe in anonymous travel, just as I believe in anonymous speech, and anonymous transactions. I recently subscribed to this list to help mature my views on issues such as collection and verification of electronic database information by private and gov't entities. I'm curious where the people here stand on such a policy. Do you feel that positive ID to fly on a plane should be permissable? How about a law to put a stop to it? -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 5.0 beta Charset: noconv iQBVAwUBM5Z4EEGpGhRXg5NZAQFqngH/cFolkgUv2Bx7hGchz1qYTi5wQ4IAASsH uCQRMEEqxra0ZtqFASBXGJokTwqzb2ueJbxnenPS1BWd6foCqkbOIg== =kpOc -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
I believe this is a bad policy, and think it should be opposed. Perhaps a law should be considered to change this. But obviously many people here would tell me I could just take another mode of transportation, such as riding the bus. Airlines are private corporations owned by their owners, not by their riders. The airlines apparently have a right (as Delta is doing) of demanding any prerequisite they wish for travel. In the case of Delta, the prerequisite is "May I see your papers, please?"
A brief reading of the above rant should illustrate to anyone who was not convinced previously that Robert has gone over the edge. Who are you to decide what the privately owned airline asks for a prerequisite of allowing you to travel on their planes? They are free to enforce whatever terms they wish in a private contract between themselves and the passenger. If more people refused to travel on airlines because of their requirements they would stop asking for ID. If the giving of real, genuine ID were not mandated by law you could just give a false ID card (providing the contract had to clause against this). Where did you obtain such a strange view of the world as to believe a private corporate entity cannot enforce whatever contract it wants?
I believe in anonymous travel, just as I believe in anonymous speech, and anonymous transactions. I recently subscribed to this list to help mature my views on issues such as collection and verification of electronic database information by private and gov't entities.
I'm curious where the people here stand on such a policy. Do you feel that positive ID to fly on a plane should be permissable? How about a law to put a stop to it?
The fact is the government has no right to demand that true genuine ID be given under any circumstances. The corporation can in a private contract demand that the ID it is given is genuine, breach of this contract will carry whatever penalties are negotiated and included in the contract. An anarchist society may not necessarily be more private than a police state, one merely has the right to choose in the former. If the contract between myself and an airline demands that I release information I am not happy releasing, I can walk away. If I have no other means of transport then I have only two choices: Travel or don`t. Your views appear to me to be more socialist than anarcho-capitalist or even minarchist. I would personally much rather see a world where my private information is free for everyone to see, than one where corporations and private individuals are not free to make whatever contracts they want, of course, the two are not mutually exclusive. Datacomms Technologies data security Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"
At 4:50 PM -0700 6/3/97, Kent Crispin wrote:
Contrast ["milita violence"] with the brilliance of the anarchist Eward Abbey in "The Monkey Wrench Gang", where the anti-government acts were calculated to call forth popular support.
This is an important point. When you kill people, you make implacable enemies. Consider the SF Bay area rescue team that is still trying to learn how to live with the memory of the mangled bodies they found Oklahoma City. They hate the person(s) responsible for the bombing and they did not even have relatives killed there. If you at least avoid killing people, then you have fewer bitter enemies and a better chance of holding on to your winnings. The examples of Gandhi, King, and Mandala come to mind. Contrast their success with the results of the violence approach as exemplified by the generations old wars in Ireland and Israel. For cypherpunks this comes down to: Make code, not bombs. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | The Internet was designed | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | to protect the free world | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz@netcom.com | from hostile governments. | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA
At 8:25 AM -0700 6/4/97, Jeremiah A Blatz wrote:
Bill Frantz <frantz@netcom.com> writes:
At 4:50 PM -0700 6/3/97, Kent Crispin wrote:
Contrast ["milita violence"] with the brilliance of the anarchist Eward Abbey in "The Monkey Wrench Gang", where the anti-government acts were calculated to call forth popular support. <snip> If you at least avoid killing people, then you have fewer bitter enemies and a better chance of holding on to your winnings. The examples of Gandhi, King, and Mandala come to mind. Contrast their success with the results of the violence approach as exemplified by the generations old wars in Ireland and Israel.
You left out Sea Shepard, who sank the entire Icelandic whaling fleet (with zero casualties) on night. Earth First!, Greenpeace, and other somewhat-less-direct action groups have used "terrorist" means and achieved enourmous popular support.
I don't want to start "defending terrorism," esp. of the murderous sort, but the plain fact for anyone to see is that terrorism often _does_ work. Look at Palestine/Israel/the Zionist Insect/whatever. Had the Palestinians calmly filed petitions to get the land back that was seized by European Jews after the Second World War--the Brits often referred to Palestinians and Arabs as "sand niggers"--would any land ever have been transferred back? (Zionists will probably jump in here citing the various wars which triggered various land ownership changes, a la Gaza, the West Bank, parts of Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, etc. We cannot generally argue "alternate histories," though.) It seems obvious that 40 years of "terrorist" (freedom fighting?) attacks by "radical" Palestinian groups had a lot to do with Israeli voters and government deciding enough was enough and agreeing to limited self-government, etc. (The whole area and political scene is notoriously complicated. I've never been there, I'm not a Jew, nor am I a sand nigger, etc. I can't say whether the political scene would have been resolved better or more peacably had terrorism not occurred, but my strong suspicion is that the Palestinians would still be filing their petitions and being given the bureaucratic runaround had they never started blowing things up.) Terrorism is also what the American colonists did to British soldiers. Ambushing them from the trees was not a kosher form of attack (no pun intended), nor was attacking their barracks at night. (Sounds like blowing up the Americans in Beirut, doesn't it?) (In fact, the act of terrorism against the 242 Marines in Beirut in 1983 "worked," didn't it? The Americans were on their way out within weeks.) Yes, innocents die in such attacks. Yes, grieving mothers cry. Yes, yes, yes to all of the denunciations of terrorism. But the fact is that all war is a kind of terrorism, and all wars and all struggles have resulted in deaths of innocents. (Intereting that Bell is so widely condemned for wanting to transfer the burden to the actual guilty parties, and not the innocents usually consumed as fuel in wars.) --Tim May There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <v03102818afbb58470a20@[207.167.93.63]>, on 06/04/97 at 10:51 AM, Tim May <tcmay@got.net> said:
Yes, innocents die in such attacks. Yes, grieving mothers cry. Yes, yes, yes to all of the denunciations of terrorism. But the fact is that all war is a kind of terrorism, and all wars and all struggles have resulted in deaths of innocents.
(Intereting that Bell is so widely condemned for wanting to transfer the burden to the actual guilty parties, and not the innocents usually consumed as fuel in wars.)
Hi Tim, I think a distinction needs to be made between a war of aggression and people defending against that aggression. For the most part thoses labeled as "terrorist" are the one who are fighting against an aggressor. Most terrorist don't just wake up one morning and decide to start blowing things up. They only become active after a foreign power attacks them and they react in self defence no different if some one breaks into you house and you shoot them (I am sure that there are some liberal winnies here who think that selfdefence is wrong). If you did not have the Federal government acting as an aggressor towards its own citizens then you would not see such things happen. I personnaly think the OK was a poor choice of targets. There are much more strategic targets in DC and MD. You would think that McVeigh, with his military background, would have known better. - -- - --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html - --------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: cp850 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBM5W+049Co1n+aLhhAQHHcgP+M3V/0z4bTc9RWVF172cMQwCULm2gkwV8 f4/M5FhPn1FgMujf3IJeZp+GHd8ewJ9rmWIRILnwOTbSTUBQuzW7neaeRSLkDA0o pF5Fjc7ApMz0KQZPbVCxI8i64Ca3s56xaos8XMlUcBl1Exz9fH8cf3SKz8tEKTVv OAmhgkYLuWI= =uH9O -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
"William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@amaranth.com> writes:
For the most part thoses labeled as "terrorist" are the one who are fighting against an aggressor. Most terrorist don't just wake up one morning and decide to start blowing things up. They only become active after a foreign power attacks them and they react in self defence no different if some one breaks into you house and you shoot them (I am sure that there are some liberal winnies here who think that selfdefence is wrong). ...
Rant: I think Joseph Stalin was a cool guy, even though he had my great-grandpa shot (who was btw a U.S. citizen). One of the many interesting contributions Joe Stalin made to the Marxist theory was the observation that the class struggle intensifies as the old mode of production becomes obsolete; and that there's really no difference between "terrorist acts" and government-sponsored violence and economic deprivation. You might view the second statement as the generalization of Klauzewitz's (or Bismarck's?) maxim that war is the continuation of foreign policy by other means. Consider, for example, the evolution from the feudal mode of production to capitalism in Spanish Netherlands. The representatives of the Spanish King first tries to suppress the emerging capitalism by increased regulation and taxation. When that failed, they resorted to mass executions and confiscations under the guise of fighting Protestants. Consider, for example, a Black child in the United States who dies of a trivial curable disease because of the lack of health care. Consider the child's parents who labor "off the books" in menial jobs, who are deprived by the state from the ability to marry, to work "on the books", to hold a bank account, et al. Is being deprived from the results of one's labor that different from being sold at an auctioned and whipped in a public ceremony to terrify other (wage) slaves? Joe Stalin himself took part in several spectacular terrorist acts in his youth, which resulted in deaths of dozens of "innocent bystanders". What I'm driving at is: someone said earlier that Cypherpunks don't make bombs, Cypherpunks write code. Well, my response is, if you write code for anonymous electronic commerce that seriously challenges the gubmint, in a free market environment, then the gubmint will first try to regulate it out of existence, and if it fails, it will use whatever force is necessary, including jailing and shooting people, to fight for it survival. The obsolete ruling class is doomed by thr inevitable historical process, but it will put up a tremendous fight before giving up its ghost. Prepare for crypto to be criminalzed. Prepare for the former cpunks who "sold out" (C2Net and the like) to support criminalization of crypto use within the U.S. in exchange for a possible relexation of export rules. Prepare for any instrument that resembles bearer bonds to be outlawed. Prepare for Internet gambling to be outlawed. Prepare for class struggle. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps
On Wed, 4 Jun 1997, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:
Rant: I think Joseph Stalin was a cool guy, even though he had my great-grandpa shot (who was btw a U.S. citizen).
One of the many interesting contributions Joe Stalin made to the Marxist theory was the observation that the class struggle intensifies as the old mode of production becomes obsolete; and that there's really no difference between "terrorist acts" and government-sponsored violence and economic deprivation. You might view the second statement as the generalization of Klauzewitz's (or Bismarck's?) maxim that war is the continuation of foreign policy by other means.
Well couldn't class struggle simply mean the difference between wielding large quantities of power and not. If thats the case then Stalin was the ultimate hypocrite when his wonderful revolution attained of temporary system of government. That system of government was unstable in that in failed to allow people to provide for their own and each other's welfare through free market activity. As resistance to centralized modes of production increased (especially with the farmers), the central government systematically starved 20 million people to death. Reminds me a lot of Orwell's "Animal Farm". Though I do agree in principle with the idea that corruption runs rampant at the end of a megapolitical era (for more or less the same reasons), Stalin was not the first to have this idea. For a run-down on this concept check out the much-maligned "Sovereign Individual".
Consider, for example, a Black child in the United States who dies of a trivial curable disease because of the lack of health care. Consider the child's parents who labor "off the books" in menial jobs, who are deprived by the state from the ability to marry, to work "on the books", to hold a bank account, et al. Is being deprived from the results of one's labor that different from being sold at an auctioned and whipped in a public ceremony to terrify other (wage) slaves?
No. I agree with you here. I think the difference is in the resolve of the individuals under this kind of pressure.
Joe Stalin himself took part in several spectacular terrorist acts in his youth, which resulted in deaths of dozens of "innocent bystanders".
make that millions
Prepare for crypto to be criminalzed.
definitely. but under what system of law? for all practical purposes the constitution is null and void. the people that run this country do so under the guise of constitutionalism, but its all a grand facade. the whole idea of the current government is a type of consensual reality. (literally so, perhaps?) When enough people agree that the version of reality no longer serves them, they will agree that it doesn't exist. This, of course, assumes they have the power to alter it.
Prepare for the former cpunks who "sold out" (C2Net and the like) to support criminalization of crypto use within the U.S. in exchange for a possible relexation of export rules.
I'm not sure I understand why you assert that C2Net "sold out". I was probably out of town at the time this discussion went down. Jim Burnes
Jim Burnes <jim.burnes@ssds.com> writes:
One of the many interesting contributions Joe Stalin made to the Marxist theory was the observation that the class struggle intensifies as the old mode of production becomes obsolete; and that there's really no differe between "terrorist acts" and government-sponsored violence and economic deprivation. You might view the second statement as the generalization of Klauzewitz's (or Bismarck's?) maxim that war is the continuation of foreign policy by other means.
Well couldn't class struggle simply mean the difference between wielding large quantities of power and not.
Stalin claimed (and I agree) that when the ruling classes are facing loss of power, even due to purely market forces, they will resort to violence to try to keep their poer: first government regulation/taxation to suppress the new technologies/modes of production, and when it fails, jailing and killing those who challenge them. Imagine a very primitive society on some sort a of Pacific Island, where people live in relative deprivation and obey the Chief, whose main duties are to deflower the virgins, and to allocate the meager coconut harvest "fairly". Some bright islander invents a way to grow many times as much coconut as before, making the Chief unneeded (say, he discovers that if you shit on the roots of the palm tree, it acts as a fertilizer :-). The Chief will try to use whatever means are at his disposal to preserve his power, starting with regulatory (declaring that to shit on palm tree roots is blasphemy), to extreme violence (punishing such blasphemy by torture and death), because the invention, even though non-violent, threatens his rule. Get it? Now replace "shitting on palm tree roots" with "anonymous digital commerce".
If thats the case then Stalin was the ultimate hypocrite when his wonderful revolution attained of temporary system of government. That system of government was unstable in that in failed to allow people to provide for their own and each other's welfare through free market activity.
Irrelevant to what I was talking about.
As resistance to centralized modes of production increased (especially with the farmers), the central government systematically starved 20 million people to death.
Irrelevant to what I was talking about, and not quite true. (The number of farmers starved to death was at most 6 million; many others died elsewhere. Yes, Stalin used arguments such as the one I cited as the theoritical justification for the forcible farm collectivization (actually invented by Trotsky :-)).
Reminds me a lot of Orwell's "Animal Farm".
Though I do agree in principle with the idea that corruption runs rampant at the end of a megapolitical era (for more or less the same reasons), Stalin was not the first to have this idea. For a run-down on this concept check out the much-maligned "Sovereign Individual".
Consider, for example, a Black child in the United States who dies of a trivial curable disease because of the lack of health care. Consider the child's parents who labor "off the books" in menial jobs, who are deprived by the state from the ability to marry, to work "on the books", to hold a bank account, et al. Is being deprived from the results of one's labor that different from being sold at an auctioned and whipped in a public ceremony to terrify other (wage) slaves?
No. I agree with you here. I think the difference is in the resolve of the individuals under this kind of pressure.
Joe Stalin himself took part in several spectacular terrorist acts in his youth, which resulted in deaths of dozens of "innocent bystanders".
make that millions
Not in his youth. Before Stalin got in the position of ordering his minion to kill millions of people, he used to be a "hands-on" terrorist - blowing up Tsarist officials, robbing banks, killing numbers of "innocent bystanders".
Prepare for crypto to be criminalzed.
definitely. but under what system of law? for all practical purposes the constitution is null and void. the people that run this country do so under the guise of constitutionalism, but its all a grand facade. the whole idea of the current government is a type of consensual reality. (literally so, perhaps?) When enough people agree that the version of reality no longer serves them, they will agree that it doesn't exist.
This, of course, assumes they have the power to alter it.
Under the same system of law that criminalizes mj, sex for teenagers, "sodomy" between concenting adults, driving over 55, tax evasion, et al.
Prepare for the former cpunks who "sold out" (C2Net and the like) to support criminalization of crypto use within the U.S. in exchange for a possible relexation of export rules.
I'm not sure I understand why you assert that C2Net "sold out". I was probably out of town at the time this discussion went down.
Yes - review the list archives. C2Net supports criminalizing domestic use of encryption for the first time, and also sends threatening lawyer letters to security experts who question their products. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps
On Fri, 6 Jun 1997, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:
(The number of farmers starved to death was at most 6 million; many others died elsewhere. Yes, Stalin used arguments such as the one I cited as the theoritical justification for the forcible farm collectivization (actually invented by Trotsky :-)).
Thanks for the correction. (geez...how often is that heard on this group ;-) )
Prepare for crypto to be criminalzed.
definitely. but under what system of law? for all practical purposes the constitution is null and void. the people that run this country do so under the guise of constitutionalism, but its all a grand facade. the whole idea of the current government is a type of consensual reality. (literally so, perhaps?) When enough people agree that the version of reality no longer serves them, they will agree that it doesn't exist.
This, of course, assumes they have the power to alter it.
Under the same system of law that criminalizes mj, sex for teenagers, "sodomy" between concenting adults, driving over 55, tax evasion, et al.
I understand, but my point was that at some point the system of "law" became simply a system of supplicating the masses and no longer serves justice. When the system of law ceases to be a system of law and becomes of system of corruption I no longer refer to it as law. Important Orwellian distinction. Never let the bastards control the definitions and language. Clear thought on most matters can only occurr when the definitions are clear and true. If I said that my house was a thing with no roof, no electricity, but it had a good cable hook-up, I may never know what a real house is. But I may sense the need to keep the rain off my head. Oh well. Its a hard thing to describe. I guess its like the whole liberal debate on "assault weapons". They even have the conservative pro-gun types talking in those terms. When your opponent controls the language of the debate, they have already won.
Prepare for the former cpunks who > > > "sold out" (C2Net and the like) to support criminalization of crypto use
I said: I'm not sure I understand why you assert that C2Net "sold out". I was probably out of town at the time this discussion went down. You said: Yes - review the list archives. C2Net supports criminalizing domestic use of encryption for the first time, and also sends threatening lawyer letters to security experts who question their products. If this is true (the bit about supporting criminalization of crypto) it contradicts everything I know about Parekh. Im not saying its not possible, but did they really just come out and say it?? The part about using lawyers to threaten the people who question the quality of their products is slimy, but predictable. If you can give me a pointer to the relavent part of the archives I'd appreciate it. Jim Burnes
I understand, but my point was that at some point the system of "law" became simply a system of supplicating the masses and no longer serves justice. When the system of law ceases to be a system of law and becomes of system of corruption I no longer refer to it as law. Important Orwellian distinction. Never let the bastards control the definitions and language.
From "The Road to Surfdom," F.A. Hayek, as quoted from the classical exposition by A. V. Dicey in "The Law of the Constitution" (8th ed.), p. 198, the Rule of Law "means, in the first place the absolute supremacy or
"Nothing distinguishes more clearly conditions in a free country from those in a country under arbitrary government than the observance in the former of the great principles known as the Rule of Law. Stripped of all technicalities, this means that government in all its actions is bound by rules fixed and announced beforehand-rules which make it possible to foresee with fair certainty how the authority will use its coercive powers in given circumstances and to plan one's individual affairs on the basis of this knowledge." predominance of regular law as opposed to the influence of arbitrary power, and excludes the existence of arbitrariness, of prerogative, or even of wide discretionary authority on the part of government." --Steve
On Tue, 10 Jun 1997, Steve Schear wrote:
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 18:22:38 -0700 From: Steve Schear <azur@netcom.com> To: Jim Burnes <jim.burnes@ssds.com> Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com Subject: Re: [CONTROVERSIAL]: A Defense of Terrorism
I understand, but my point was that at some point the system of "law" became simply a system of supplicating the masses and no longer serves justice. When the system of law ceases to be a system of law and becomes of system of corruption I no longer refer to it as law. Important Orwellian distinction. Never let the bastards control the definitions and language.
"Nothing distinguishes more clearly conditions in a free country from those in a country under arbitrary government than the observance in the former of the great principles known as the Rule of Law. Stripped of all technicalities, this means that government in all its actions is bound by rules fixed and announced beforehand-rules which make it possible to foresee with fair certainty how the authority will use its coercive powers in given circumstances and to plan one's individual affairs on the basis of this knowledge."
From "The Road to Surfdom," F.A. Hayek, as quoted from the classical exposition by A. V. Dicey in "The Law of the Constitution" (8th ed.), p. 198, the Rule of Law "means, in the first place the absolute supremacy or predominance of regular law as opposed to the influence of arbitrary power, and excludes the existence of arbitrariness, of prerogative, or even of wide discretionary authority on the part of government."
Steve: Thanks. I think you agreed with me there. I agree with Hayek's observation. When the government is no longer bound by the "Rule of Law" (c), it is no longer a rule of law, but becomes a capricious set of miscellany designed to entrap (when necessary) those who would oppose the priveledged. (those with access to large amounts of cash, lawyers, connections etc) Jim Burnes
At 11:26 PM -0700 6/4/97, Bill Frantz wrote:
as it is in northern Ireland, Palestine/Israel, and the USA. Neither side is likely to get tired and go home. The only long-term solution is to learn to live together. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
On this subject, my list colleague Bill and I are from different planets. The chasm that separates us is a Grand Canyon. When I hear people talk about "why can't we just get along together?" and its variants, I reach for my .45. "Learning to live together" is absurd when the other side has stolen your land. Strong crypto is also a tool of vengeance. --Tim May There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
Hi Tim,
as it is in northern Ireland, Palestine/Israel, and the USA. Neither side is likely to get tired and go home. The only long-term solution is to learn to live together. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
When I hear people talk about "why can't we just get along together?" and its variants, I reach for my .45.
Why is it that so many people on the other side of the ocean still think they are in the Far West ?
"Learning to live together" is absurd when the other side has stolen your land. ^^^^
'your' land ? Oh, you mean what Columbus did ? Otoh, you're right. The best way to solve problems is to kill the problem-maker(s at both sides). But be sure to kill everyone, including babies and such. And don't forget to kill everyone you suspect might one day think (s)he is a far-far-descendant of the killed ones... Let's blow up the earth, while we're on it ? not! The major reason people can't live together is furnished by politicians who feel they should make it to history books ;-( kr= \\\___/// \\ - - // ( @ @ ) +---------------oOOo-(_)-oOOo-------------+ | kris carlier - carlier@iguana.be | | Hiroshima 45, Tsjernobyl 86, Windows 95 | | Linux, the choice of a GNU gener8ion | | SMS: +32-75-61.43.05 | +------------------------Oooo-------------+ oooO ( ) ( ) ) / \ ( (_/ \_)
"Learning to live together" is absurd when the other side has stolen your land. ^^^^
'your' land ? Oh, you mean what Columbus did ? Otoh, you're right. The best way to solve problems is to kill the problem-maker(s at both sides). But be sure to kill everyone, including babies and such. And don't forget to kill everyone you suspect might one day think (s)he is a far-far-descendant of the killed ones... Let's blow up the earth, while we're on it ?
How long have you been on this list? Clearly not long enough.
not! The major reason people can't live together is furnished by politicians who feel they should make it to history books ;-(
Tims post made a good point, people soon forget the causes of conflict and only see the effects, today, hardly anyone in the UK sees the IRA as an organisation devoted to liberating NI, merely a bunch of thugs. Of course they have brought this on themselves by indiscriminately blowing things up. Talking of which the Queen is visiting Hastings (a town about 5 miles from me) today, I hope the IRA blow her up... Datacomms Technologies data security Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"
Paul Bradley <paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk> writes:
Tims post made a good point, people soon forget the causes of conflict and only see the effects, today, hardly anyone in the UK sees the IRA as an organisation devoted to liberating NI, merely a bunch of thugs. Of
Of course they forget the nearly thousand years of English thuggery in Ireland...
course they have brought this on themselves by indiscriminately blowing things up. Talking of which the Queen is visiting Hastings (a town about 5 miles from me) today, I hope the IRA blow her up...
That would be just lovely! I'm sorry the IRS missed a chance to blow up the Blair motherfucker during his recent $400 dinner. Please send donations to Sinn Fein every time you see Hallam Baker post. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps
Tims post made a good point, people soon forget the causes of conflict and only see the effects, today, hardly anyone in the UK sees the IRA as an organisation devoted to liberating NI, merely a bunch of thugs. Of
Of course they forget the nearly thousand years of English thuggery in Ireland...
Indeed, the English in Ireland were, and are, immesurably worse than the IRA in terms of the scale of their crimes.
course they have brought this on themselves by indiscriminately blowing things up. Talking of which the Queen is visiting Hastings (a town about 5 miles from me) today, I hope the IRA blow her up...
That would be just lovely!
I'm sorry the IRS missed a chance to blow up the Blair motherfucker during his recent $400 dinner.
Indeed, during the Blair<->Clinton meeting/cocksucking session might have been a good time to drop a bomb on Downing St.
Please send donations to Sinn Fein every time you see Hallam Baker post.
Of course. Datacomms Technologies data security Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"
High Paul, On Fri, 6 Jun 1997, Paul Bradley wrote:
How long have you been on this list? Clearly not long enough.
I've not been long enough on this list for what ? Don't know about you, but imvho violence is not a right solution. I will never be long enough on this list to change my mind on that.
Tims post made a good point, people soon forget the causes of conflict and only see the effects, today, hardly anyone in the UK sees the IRA as an organisation devoted to liberating NI, merely a bunch of thugs. Of course they have brought this on themselves by indiscriminately blowing things up. Talking of which the Queen is visiting Hastings (a town about
I must admit that it has helped quite a lot, those bombs. Expecially for the building sector.
5 miles from me) today, I hope the IRA blow her up...
How much must you hate someone to wish him/her dead ? Have you ever been 'contronted' with dead, Paul ? Someone of your friends, relatives, ... who died, perhaps ? How can you wish some other human being the same ? What if the IRA would blow up the queen ? I guess Charles is the next to step on then ? What a progress !! Havalook at Kongo: Mobutu has gone. Much better now ! After several thousands were killed, the new president gives his first orders: "women should not wear tight shirts anymore (I thought they were supposed to take them off, but...) nor should they act in a sensual way. Right, violence is at least A solution. But for what ? BTW, I'd be very interested if you would care telling something more about Northern Ireland. That's where you live I guess ? Are you "Catholic" or "Protestant" ? kr= \\\___/// \\ - - // ( @ @ ) +---------------oOOo-(_)-oOOo-------------+ | kris carlier - carlier@iguana.be | | Hiroshima 45, Tsjernobyl 86, Windows 95 | | Linux, the choice of a GNU gener8ion | | SMS: +32-75-61.43.05 | +------------------------Oooo-------------+ oooO ( ) ( ) ) / \ ( (_/ \_)
How much must you hate someone to wish him/her dead ? Have you ever been 'contronted' with dead, Paul ? Someone of your friends, relatives, ... who died, perhaps ? How can you wish some other human being the same ? What if the IRA would blow up the queen ? I guess Charles is the next to step on then ? What a progress !!
Indeed I have, as I have said in other posts I have no particular sympathies with the IRA, they are thugs who kill indiscriminately. Wishing someone dead is not that great a step from accepting that they commit crime against you. I don`t wish the queen dead because of her clear opposition to terrorist violence, there are other reasons for this. Maybe wishing her dead is a little too strong in this particular case.
Havalook at Kongo: Mobutu has gone. Much better now ! After several thousands were killed, the new president gives his first orders: "women should not wear tight shirts anymore (I thought they were supposed to take them off, but...) nor should they act in a sensual way.
Right, violence is at least A solution. But for what ? BTW, I'd be very interested if you would care telling something more about Northern Ireland. That's where you live I guess ? Are you "Catholic" or "Protestant" ?
I live in mainland England. NI, although still violent, is now not the only place bombed by the IRA, until a few years ago they mainly attacked targets in NI, they now bomb all over the country. I do not claim that violence is a global solution, merely that in some cases it works. And I don`t believe labelling retaliation "violence" is really correct, the word violence is derived from violate, ie. to violate someones rights in a material and tangiable manner, I don`t believe retaliation or defence is a violation of rights, merely a response to agression. I personally see other ways than violence out of most disagreements, but I believe the only way to remove the power of the state is through selective violence as part of an overall strategy including strong cryptography and associated technologies. Datacomms Technologies data security Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"
High Paul, On Sat, 7 Jun 1997, Paul Bradley wrote: I'm sorry, I should refrain from posting to this list again till I understand English ;-)
disagreements, but I believe the only way to remove the power of the state is through selective violence as part of an overall strategy including strong cryptography and associated technologies.
I agree with civil disobediance as a matter of revolt, and of course if you have a reason to do so. Not everything the government does is wrong, only because it is done by the government. kr= \\\___/// \\ - - // ( @ @ ) +---------------oOOo-(_)-oOOo-------------+ | kris carlier - carlier@iguana.be | | Hiroshima 45, Tsjernobyl 86, Windows 95 | | Linux, the choice of a GNU gener8ion | | SMS: +32-75-61.43.05 | +------------------------Oooo-------------+ oooO ( ) ( ) ) / \ ( (_/ \_)
I agree with civil disobediance as a matter of revolt, and of course if you have a reason to do so. Not everything the government does is wrong, only because it is done by the government.
There we disagree. I believe the scale of crimes commited by governments as a whole varies from government to government, and from one time to another. However, the natural "evolutionary" process of government always results in a pervasive state which controls more than it should. This is why, although I support the ideals and sentiments behind minarchism, I do not believe it is possible, without systems such as AP, or simply anonymous assasination contracts, to support minarchist government and keep it stable and static. (maybe, even though Jim Bell intended AP to support and maintain anarchy it might lead to more stable minarchist government by providing a means of removing those who go too far in their search for power?). Even then though, I cannot see how a stable minarchist state can be created which we can be assured will remain static in it`s powers, and the very notion of a state which has certain powers at its disposal, even if it does not use them, does not leave me with a good feeling. Datacomms Technologies data security Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"
Bill Frantz <frantz@netcom.com> writes:
At 4:50 PM -0700 6/3/97, Kent Crispin wrote:
Contrast ["milita violence"] with the brilliance of the anarchist Eward Abbey in "The Monkey Wrench Gang", where the anti-government acts were calculated to call forth popular support. <snip> If you at least avoid killing people, then you have fewer bitter enemies and a better chance of holding on to your winnings. The examples of Gandhi, King, and Mandala come to mind. Contrast their success with the results of the violence approach as exemplified by the generations old wars in Ireland and Israel.
You left out Sea Shepard, who sank the entire Icelandic whaling fleet (with zero casualties) on night. Earth First!, Greenpeace, and other somewhat-less-direct action groups have used "terrorist" means and achieved enourmous popular support. Jer "standing on top of the world/ never knew how you never could/ never knew why you never could live/ innocent life that everyone did" -Wormhole
At 10:51 AM -0700 6/4/97, Tim May wrote:
At 8:25 AM -0700 6/4/97, Jeremiah A Blatz wrote:
Bill Frantz <frantz@netcom.com> writes:
At 4:50 PM -0700 6/3/97, Kent Crispin wrote:
Contrast ["milita violence"] with the brilliance of the anarchist Eward Abbey in "The Monkey Wrench Gang", where the anti-government acts were calculated to call forth popular support. <snip> If you at least avoid killing people, then you have fewer bitter enemies and a better chance of holding on to your winnings. The examples of Gandhi, King, and Mandala come to mind. Contrast their success with the results of the violence approach as exemplified by the generations old wars in Ireland and Israel.
You left out Sea Shepard, who sank the entire Icelandic whaling fleet (with zero casualties) on night. Earth First!, Greenpeace, and other somewhat-less-direct action groups have used "terrorist" means and achieved enourmous popular support.
I don't want to start "defending terrorism," esp. of the murderous sort, but the plain fact for anyone to see is that terrorism often _does_ work.
Look at Palestine/Israel/the Zionist Insect/whatever.
Had the Palestinians calmly filed petitions to get the land back that was seized by European Jews after the Second World War--the Brits often referred to Palestinians and Arabs as "sand niggers"--would any land ever have been transferred back?
Right. They have their land back. And they have peace on that land. Sure. They certainly could have not done much worse had the followed Gandhi and King with massive civil disobedience. Civil disobedience has a pretty good track record when used against civilized countries. (I wouldn't recommend it in present-day China or Nazi Germany.)
(In fact, the act of terrorism against the 242 Marines in Beirut in 1983 "worked," didn't it? The Americans were on their way out within weeks.)
Probably because there wasn't much domestic support for our staying there. The same comment applies to the British leaving Palestine. IMHO, the situation is quite different when the disagreement is civil-war in nature, as it is in northern Ireland, Palestine/Israel, and the USA. Neither side is likely to get tired and go home. The only long-term solution is to learn to live together. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | The Internet was designed | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | to protect the free world | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz@netcom.com | from hostile governments. | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA
At 11:34 PM -0700 6/4/97, Tim May wrote:
At 11:26 PM -0700 6/4/97, Bill Frantz wrote:
as it is in northern Ireland, Palestine/Israel, and the USA. Neither side is likely to get tired and go home. The only long-term solution is to learn to live together. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
On this subject, my list colleague Bill and I are from different planets. The chasm that separates us is a Grand Canyon.
When I hear people talk about "why can't we just get along together?" and its variants, I reach for my .45.
"Learning to live together" is absurd when the other side has stolen your land.
I'm glad the Indians aren't acting on that precept. (But in the past they did act and got their asses whooped real good. That's why we can say, "We stole it fair and square.") More generally, if you haven't set foot on the land, and your father never set foot on the land, and so on, then trade and perhaps even friendship with whoever currently is on the land may be a better deal than poverty, blood, and death. YMMV, however you should not let religion/ideology/hate blind you to your long term rational self interest. I do agree with Tim that some things are worth fighting and even dieing for, but they should always be examined in terms of long term rational self interest. (If you're going to die anyway, then take enough of them with you to make a proper escort into paradise. If the nazi-commies are enslaving your country, then by all means take up arms in its defense. Etc.) IMHO, in northern Ireland and Palestine/Israel all the continued fighting promises is poverty, blood, and death. Accepting that possession is 100% of the law would let everyone live a better life (except the politicos who feed on hate). ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | The Internet was designed | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | to protect the free world | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz@netcom.com | from hostile governments. | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA
At 08:41 PM 6/2/97 -0400, Hallam-Baker wrote:
Appologists for McVeigh should consider that his actions did not advance the militia cause an iota, it destroyed it and along with it much of the right wing fringe.
"Follow the money" is usually sound advice. More general, ask "who benefits". Clearly, the constitutional militias and civil libertarians are the losers of the Oklahoma bombing. The sole benefactors are the statists and numerous government agencies. 'Nuff said, --Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred. Put a stake through the heart of DES! Join the quest at http://www.frii.com/~rcv/deschall.htm
At 08:41 PM 6/2/97 -0400, Hallam-Baker wrote:
Appologists for McVeigh should consider that his actions did not advance the militia cause an iota, it destroyed it and along with it much of the right wing fringe.
"Follow the money" is usually sound advice. More general, ask "who benefits". Clearly, the constitutional militias and civil libertarians are the losers of the Oklahoma bombing. The sole benefactors are the statists and numerous government agencies.
That does not mean that they were the instigators. The militia potentially stood to gain if the government overreacted and introduced martial law type curbs. The objective of terrorism is to provoke a reaction that can be used as "proof" of the dictatorial nature of the opponent. This is why the IRA spends its time burning down factories where Catholics work, it can then blame the state of the Northern Ireland economy on "the British". The damage done to Newt, Limbaugh and co was because of their reaction to the bomb. Limbaugh failed to give the categorical repudiation the act required. Liddy appeared to be supportive with his "shoot for the head" statement. It was very easy to pin part of the blame for Oaklahoma on the people who had made a living out of stirring up hatred and paranoia. Newt Gingrich got tarred by association with Liddy and Limbaugh. When the bombing occured he did precisely what he accuses Clinton of, he equivocated waiting until the public mood was apparent to condem the radio extreemists. It was too late for Newt to avoid blame since he had also made much of his career out of the type of anti-government rant that led McVeigh to mass murder. There is a principle in propaganda that people unwittingly accuse others of their own failings. Hence Newt who began his speakership by seaking a $2 million bribe from Rupert Murdoch believes Clinton must also be on the take. The same principle is at work on the net. McVeigh is found guilty of murder on the basis of a collosal mountain of evidence. The reaction from the pro-millitia, pro-McVeigh people is that McVeigh must have been framed and everyone who believes otherwise is guilty of "knee jerk" reactions. If that isn't a knee jerk reaction I don't know what is. There is absolutely nothing that the anti-government ranters contribute to the pro-cryptography movement. They are a liability at best. Stuart Baker is even now probably peddling his Clipper chip initiative in Europe holding up one of Jim Bell's rants as "proof" of his case. Phill
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 11:25 AM 6/3/97 -0400, Hallam-Baker wrote:
There is absolutely nothing that the anti-government ranters contribute to the pro-cryptography movement. They are a liability at best. Stuart Baker is even now probably peddling his Clipper chip initiative in Europe holding up one of Jim Bell's rants as "proof" of his case.
Nothing except motivation. Anti-government ranters founded this list, invented remailers, and did a lot of other good work. DCF -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 5.0 beta Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBM5SIfIVO4r4sgSPhAQE/0QQAk5fzKoUnbJRs0x1QVyaXEW95fWHQiUzB Bwz5ulJfTV2FT/jM1MmwBzh37hEeWPthupJcIMJR3XsINs2eVw29ZgKN0VRjYYu+ +joXjinNv5alPA/4qF/JeEGrhzr8xe5nZwXfdpzvmx/JHZnjxPBtgMZB7WO/bFeS iBI1wZ7OYbg= =+Wuz -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
There is absolutely nothing that the anti-government ranters contribute to the pro-cryptography movement. They are a liability at best. Stuart Baker is even now probably peddling his Clipper chip initiative in Europe holding up one of Jim Bell's rants as "proof" of his case.
Nothing except motivation. Anti-government ranters founded this list, invented remailers, and did a lot of other good work.
Actually remailers were invented by a lass called Stephi whose hobbies appeared to include being tied up for fun. The original remailer operating out of wizvax was a script that allowed anonymous posts into alt.sex.bondage. Then it was expanded to support a couple of other newsgroups such as alt.abuse. When Stephi ran out of cash to keep wizvax running (I have a suspicion it was something expensive power wise) Julf took over the code and the scripts. I'll accept that the ranting faction do some good work but I've not seen anything usefull out of either Bell or Vulis unless that is you are an FBI agent looking to get a promotion from Freeh. Phill
At 04:50 PM 6/3/97 -0700, Tim May wrote:
And so this was very probably what Duncan meant when he said some of the ranting faction were the inventors of remailers.
(Both Eric and Hugh are known to rant, or at least have done so at various times. Eric had some memorable rants at the 1995 CFP when he loudly declared to the National Research Council fact-finding committee, "I am a crypto anarchist.") ... I'm satisfied with my contributions, even if you think the ranters are doing nothing to help the causes you apparently support.
For an almost totally off-topic followup, there was a religious sect in England in the mid-1600s called the "Ranters"; one of the books by Quaker writer Robert Barclay is called "Anarchy of the Ranters" (he was against them ...) Here on Cypherpunks, we've got the "Ranting of the Anarchists" :-) Another writer on the Net, who's more pro-Ranter, says that
No evidence suggests that any Ranter ever took an interest in Islam. However, there exists some reason to believe in connections between Ranterism and piracy. A "Ranter's Bay" in Madagascar sheltered a pirate utopia later in the 17th century, and a number of Ranters were exiled to the Caribbean during the "Golden Age of Piracy" there.
Nothing new under the Sun... # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp # (If this is a mailing list or news, please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)
Hallam-Baker <hallam@ai.mit.edu> writes:
There is absolutely nothing that the anti-government ranters contribute to the pro-cryptography movement...
Nothing except motivation. Anti-government ranters founded this list, invented remailers, and did a lot of other good work.
[first remailer ...]
I'll accept that the ranting faction do some good work but I've not seen anything usefull out of either Bell or Vulis unless that is you are an FBI agent looking to get a promotion from Freeh.
Dimitri rights code sometimes. He wrote a cancel-bot. Very constructive piece of work in an indirect way. See: having nice freely available cancel-bots enables technically clueless, would be-censors to censor more. They censor more, and cause a nuisance for themselves sending out tons of cancel messages. This incentivizes more and more people to ignore cancels (the trend in news administration these days I understand is to ignore cancels entirely), which means that you can't have your USENET posts censored nearly as easily. Adam -- Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/ print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`
At 2:29 PM -0700 6/3/97, Hallam-Baker wrote:
There is absolutely nothing that the anti-government ranters contribute to the pro-cryptography movement. They are a liability at best. Stuart Baker is even now probably peddling his Clipper chip initiative in Europe holding up one of Jim Bell's rants as "proof" of his case.
Nothing except motivation. Anti-government ranters founded this list, invented remailers, and did a lot of other good work.
Actually remailers were invented by a lass called Stephi whose hobbies appeared to include being tied up for fun. The original remailer operating out of wizvax was a script that allowed anonymous posts into alt.sex.bondage. Then it was expanded to support a couple of other newsgroups such as alt.abuse. When Stephi ran out of cash to keep wizvax running (I have a suspicion it was something expensive power wise) Julf took over the code and the scripts.
While I didn't make the claim that remailers were invented by us, I think I understand Duncan's point to refer to "true" remailers, not the Kleinpaste/Julf form used in anon.penet.fi. And even these were not "invented" by us, but rather were implementations, initially by Eric Hughes and Hal Finney, then by several others (the refinements, by Matt Ghio and Lance Cottrell, and the "premail" scripts of Raph Levien, and others), of David Chaum's 1981 "digital mixes." The Kleinpaste/Julf "remailer" lacks basic security provisions, and is more properly called an "anonymizing service," in my opinion. (I'm not familiar with the "Stephi" story, but I know Kleinpaste wrote up a simple anonymizing service, which he claims he did in one evening, and decided not to support it; he transferred the code to Julf, who supported and (I presume) enhanced it, and the rest is history). The Julf anonymizing service was of course vulnerable to legal attacks, and several were mounted. Julf shut the system down at about the time two of them were causing him great trouble, the Scientologist suit, and the front page article in a British tabloid saying his site helped child pornographers (which is undeniably true, of course).
I'll accept that the ranting faction do some good work but I've not seen anything usefull out of either Bell or Vulis unless that is you are an FBI agent looking to get a promotion from Freeh.
This member of the "ranting faction" is happy with what he is done. I am not a C++ programmer and have no interest in spending my life worrying about malloc and buffer overruns. I am of course glad that some folks do make this their life's work. At the first Cypherpunks physical meeting I spent a couple of hours educating people on how Chaumian mixes work, and why they are important for free speech and the colonization of cyberspace. I set up a paper game, beforehand, which we played as a simulation to directly demonstrate the important features of mixes, including message posting areas (later dubbed "message pools" by Miron Cuperman, one of the earliest hosts of a remailer), remailer chaining (something the Kleinpaste/Julf service cannot offer), digital postage (which we explicitly simulated with play money included in the envelopes), and, of course, encryption at each stage. (Encryption was easily simulated with paper envelopes. Chained encryption was envelopes within envelopes. Etc.) This was in September of 1992, at the meeting organized by Eric Hughes and myself, and attended by about 25 of the best hackers we knew in the Bay Area, drawn from those we knew from the Hackers Conference, the Crypto Conference, and the usual Bay Area overlapping circles (Xanadu, AMIX, VPL, etc.). The very next day, Sunday, Hugh Daniel, Eric Hughes, and I were reflecting on the previous day's 12-hour meeting/dinner. The two of them--I can never remember which one exactly--opinined that some hacks of sendmail could allow such remailers to be built. So one weekend Eric spent two days working on this, the first day learning enough Perl to proceed, and the next day coding up such a hack of sendmail. He released it, and the first crude "remailer" of the "strip headers off and resend" sort was launched. Within a month or less, Hal Finney had added PGP encryption features. Within a few months, about a dozen remailers existed. Chaining a message back and forth through subsets of these remailers, encrypted at each stage, and even going through the same remailer multiple times, was now possible. The "mix entropy" of this routing is quite large, and is certainly vastly more robust than Julf's anonymizer service. (A law enforcement officer of some country might be able to find the exit point of a message, but would then have to get "backward collusion" through the system, into various countries. Such collusion is unlikely. Further, some of the remailer operators have a "no logs kept" policy, so back collusion is almost impossible. And one can always route messages through one's self as a remailer--assuming one operates a remailer--and destroy all records automatically and then claim completel innocence and ignorance to the narc who shows up demanding to see message logs. By the way, in America at least it is very difficult to get blanket warrants to search all e-mail.) And so this was very probably what Duncan meant when he said some of the ranting faction were the inventors of remailers. (Both Eric and Hugh are known to rant, or at least have done so at various times. Eric had some memorable rants at the 1995 CFP when he loudly declared to the National Research Council fact-finding committee, "I am a crypto anarchist.") So, Phill, we members of the "ranting faction" have had some impact. Frankly, I don't think the world would be better served if I went back to school to study number theory and became another Odzylko or Shamir, even if my genetics allowed it. Nor do I think becoming a Perl hacker is my calling. I'm satisfied with my contributions, even if you think the ranters are doing nothing to help the causes you apparently support. As they say in your country, tally ho! --Tim May There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
OK I'll partially retract the anti-government ranters comment since Tim wants to be included in it :-) I think it was clear where the comment was aimed however...
The Kleinpaste/Julf "remailer" lacks basic security provisions, and is more properly called an "anonymizing service," in my opinion. (I'm not familiar with the "Stephi" story, but I know Kleinpaste wrote up a simple anonymizing service, which he claims he did in one evening, and decided not to support it; he transferred the code to Julf, who supported and (I presume) enhanced it, and the rest is history).
All you need to do to have a complete history of the remailer history is to add in the event that caused Kleinpaste to write the code.. I remember now, Wizvax may well have been a VMS machine and hence not congenial to having its code ported off. It seems that Tim did not explore the less salubrious areas of the net but the closing down of Wizvax and the first anonymizing mailer was closely followed by another service whose name I forget but the name Kleinpaste certainly rings a bell. 1992 would be about the right time period as well. Elf Sternberg at Compuserve might well remember the rest of the story. I agree that the Julf mailer had big problems operations wise but I fear that the current mixmaster setup is a bit too unweildy for naive use. Like PGP I tend to see it as an advert to the authorities that you are likely to be up to no good. The CIA can probably find the information they really want by simply tracking PGP messages on the net and doing trafic analysis, same goes for the mixmaster class servers and the problem remains that there is no response facility. I had an idea for an anonymous contact server in the Julf mould that was resistant to the legal attack. No logs of email addresses would ever be kept, to retreive responses from the server one would have to send a retrieval request to it, possibly including a password. For one time uses this would be enough. But if you wanted to get more comprehensive deniability you could require use of encryption and send back all the messages recieved within a particular partition of the database. Its pretty difficult to get a good system that allows a two way communication to be sustained. The idea was inspired by the crypto-SPAM refusal list that I'm currently doing a beta test on, try:- http://etna.ai.mit.edu/SPAM/ Just don't tell the censorware folks... Phill
Phil writes:
I agree that the Julf mailer had big problems operations wise but I fear that the current mixmaster setup is a bit too unweildy for naive use.
I think the current level of remailer difficulty is just fine, thank-you. There is nothing inherently wrong in requiring a partial clue in order to use a remailer successfully. Services that the inbred can use too easily generally get nuked due to excessive public attention. Mailmasher strikes me as one recent obvious example. For technology to have a reasonable lifetime, it must have functionality somewhere in between impossible to use, and "click here to threaten the life of the president." -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd@netcom.com $ via Finger. $
At 5:58 PM -0700 6/3/97, Mike Duvos wrote:
For technology to have a reasonable lifetime, it must have functionality somewhere in between impossible to use, and "click here to threaten the life of the president."
<CLICK> <CLICK> Hey, Mike, I tried clicking where you said to, and nothing happened. Is your script not working yet? --Timothy McMeigh
At 06:27 PM 6/3/97 -0700, Tim May wrote:
(There are important issues, discussed by several of us several years ago, and more recently by Wei Dai and Lucky Green, dealing with correlation analysis of messages sent and messages received...esentially pattern analysis.
This type of analysis is unlikely to provide useful results for high-latency systems such as remailers. However, this analysis can be very fruitful on near real time systems such as ill-designed chained http anonymizers. [Tim of course knows this, I just want to make sure that this is universally understood.] --Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred. Put a stake through the heart of DES! Join the quest at http://www.frii.com/~rcv/deschall.htm
At 5:27 PM -0700 6/3/97, Hallam-Baker wrote:
OK I'll partially retract the anti-government ranters comment since Tim wants to be included in it :-) I think it was clear where the comment was aimed however...
Well, in light of the comments recently from Rotenberg that we are just a bunch of armchair activists, and in light of comments I've received that my articles are no longer "must reads" but are instead just "rants," and becuase I am well known to not be a C++ programmer (though I do have Smalltalk, Mathematica, and Scheme on my system...now _those_ are my kind of languages!), I felt you were broadly critiquing most of the list as not having done anything for the "cause of cryptography." (Whatever _that_ might be, if it is not remailers, message pools, data havens, and pushing for true digital cash, etc.)
It seems that Tim did not explore the less salubrious areas of the net but the closing down of Wizvax and the first anonymizing mailer was closely followed by another service whose name I forget but the name Kleinpaste certainly rings a bell. 1992 would be about the right time period as well. Elf Sternberg at Compuserve might well remember the rest of the story.
1991-92 was indeed the time of both major branches of the "remailers." Somewhere in my Cyphernomicon are some quotes from Kleinpaste and Julf, and the context of their work. Here's one quote from the chapter on remailers (available at http://www.oberlin.edu/~brchkind/cyphernomicon/cyphernomicon.contents.html): + Karl Kleinpaste was a pioneer (circa 1991-2) of remailers. He has become disenchanted: - "There are 3 sites out there which have my software: anon.penet.fi, tygra, and uiuc.edu. I have philosophical disagreement with the "universal reach" policy of anon.penet.fi (whose code is now a long-detached strain from the original software I gave Julf -- indeed, by now it may be a complete rewrite, I simply don't know); ....Very bluntly, having tried to run anon servers twice, and having had both go down due to actual legal difficulties, I don't trust people with them any more." [Karl_Kleinpaste@cs.cmu.edu, alt.privacy.anon-server, 1994-08-29] I don't know if Karl has written any longer articles on his involvement with anonymizing services.
I agree that the Julf mailer had big problems operations wise but I fear that the current mixmaster setup is a bit too unweildy for naive use. Like PGP I tend to see it as an advert to the authorities that you are likely to be up to no good. The CIA can probably find the information they really want by simply tracking PGP messages on the net and doing trafic analysis, same goes for the mixmaster class servers and the problem remains that there is no response facility.
We see this "they can probably track messages if they want to" view expressed often. Especially by people who haven't thought about the issue in detail, who perhaps just think it "only stands to reason" that the NSA or CIA could backtrack trace messages if they wished to. While not accusing Phill of being one of these folks who is just speculating, I really encourage him to carefully look at this issue, to do some calculations of the mix entropy introduced with sites use mix fan-ins of sufficient size. (Hint: 10 remailers each taking in 10 messages of the same rounded-off size give 10^10 possible routings to follow. Of course, there are not 10 billion messsages in all. But by the pigeonhole principle, in fact, it means any final output message could have been any of the input messages. If the remailers do not reveal input-output mappings ("collusion"), it is hard to imagine traffic analysis doing much. (There are important issues, discussed by several of us several years ago, and more recently by Wei Dai and Lucky Green, dealing with correlation analysis of messages sent and messages received...esentially pattern analysis. Perhaps you will say "Ah, this is what I was referring to." Perhaps.) Look, casual assertions that the CIA can trace messages through multinational chains of encrypted remailers, most with strong mixing (latency), are just that: casual assertions. We all agree that more remailers are needed, that more mechanistic (Chaumian sealed boxes) are needed, etc. With 100 digital mixes, each taking in 100 messages before resending, there are more routings to track back than there are particles in the universe. Smoke that, CIA! --Tim May
I had an idea for an anonymous contact server in the Julf mould that was resistant to the legal attack. No logs of email addresses would ever be kept, to retreive responses from the server one would have to send a retrieval request to it, possibly including a password.
For one time uses this would be enough. But if you wanted to get more comprehensive deniability you could require use of encryption and send back all the messages recieved within a particular partition of the database. Its pretty difficult to get a good system that allows a two way communication to be sustained.
The idea was inspired by the crypto-SPAM refusal list that I'm currently doing a beta test on, try:-
Just don't tell the censorware folks...
Phill
There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
Well, in light of the comments recently from Rotenberg that we are just a bunch of armchair activists, and in light of comments I've received that my
... Well Tim you did sorta ask for that particular comment... but passing on
We see this "they can probably track messages if they want to" view expressed often. Especially by people who haven't thought about the issue in detail, who perhaps just think it "only stands to reason" that the NSA or CIA could backtrack trace messages if they wished to.
The point I was making was rather different, I think the total volume of PGP mail of all types is probably not a large enough fraction of the trafic on the net to be secure. Taking any use of PGP as prima facie evidence of subversive activity probably provides a reasonable cut. If you want to take this offline I can discuss actual examples of countries that use this type of trafic analysis. The point is to identify social networks. Anyone attempting to conceal their social network is probably subversive. Note that the type of government I'm talking about here is way beyond the US in authoritarianism, much more like the USSR of old.
While not accusing Phill of being one of these folks who is just speculating, I really encourage him to carefully look at this issue, to do some calculations of the mix entropy introduced with sites use mix fan-ins of sufficient size.
How many people in total do you have using the mixers? How many mixers are there?
(Hint: 10 remailers each taking in 10 messages of the same rounded-off size give 10^10 possible routings to follow. Of course, there are not 10 billion messsages in all. But by the pigeonhole principle, in fact, it means any final output message could have been any of the input messages. If the remailers do not reveal input-output mappings ("collusion"), it is hard to imagine traffic analysis doing much.
Not if the principle applied is that any use of the mixer taints the person concerned.
With 100 digital mixes, each taking in 100 messages before resending, there are more routings to track back than there are particles in the universe. Smoke that, CIA!
If the total usebase is bellow 10,000 then identifying which person received which message is probably not too necessary. Phill
At 09:39 PM 6/3/97 -0700, Tim May wrote:
At 8:44 PM -0700 6/3/97, Hallam-Baker wrote:
The point I was making was rather different, I think the total volume of PGP mail of all types is probably not a large enough fraction of the trafic on the net to be secure. Taking any use of PGP as prima facie evidence of subversive activity probably provides a reasonable cut.
If you mean as prosecutable offense, I don't think you fully understand the laws of the United States. Much as we like to criticize the U.S., and bad laws, and whatnot, there is no such thing as "prima facie evidence of subversive activity," at least not since the House Unamerican Activities Committee and Joe McCarthy.
There's prosecution and there's investigation (and there's harassment.) If the number of people using the remailers and PGP is small, then it's easier to compile and expand the list of "usual suspects" who can be checked out more carefully with other means. For a real-world case, a friend of mine who lives in a Third World kleptocracy has a copy of PGP, but doesn't want to risk using it except for very critical mail, because his email and phones are routinely tapped (it's the kind of place that when he got a new higher-speed modem the phone company called him up and asked him what he was doing....) The local thugs were considering stealing the computer that forwards his email, but were deterred by the argument that it's password-protected so they won't be able to use it if they steal it. PGP would really stand out, and could lead to them stealing it anyway - if they were the politically murderous type rather than just thieves and thugs, it would be a serious risk. ("This is a job for Steganography, man!") Suppose, for instance, that the Feds (whatever COINTELPRO calls themselves these days) are watching Alice the Activist, and find that she's using Bob's Remailer. So they watch Bob's Remailer, and find it's sending traffic to Carol@foobar.com. Maybe they haven't known about her before. Or maybe they check with foobar.com and find she's probably Carol the Commie, who they hadn't previously known used email. No, they can't prove that Alice sent mail to Carol - but she's still a lead, and since they're both politically incorrect people, it's not a bad guess. Even with multiple remailers, say 10, this still works. On the other hand, if there are a lot of remailer users, from diverse communities, with lots of recipients and lots of traffic sources, this attack is less of a problem -- but it's still a problem. For instance, if Spam Inc. is sending out 50,000 Spams/hour, and the Feds see Carol's name in the remailer's sendmail log, there's no reason to bother checking up on her further. However, if they're also snooping the outgoing mail, and the mail to her was PGP-encrypted, and the 50,000 SPAMs weren't, then the mail to her is still interesting, even though they can't read it. You could hack the remailer to insist that all outgoing mail be encrypted (or at least contain "BEGIN PGP ENCRYPTED MESSAGE"), which would also cut down on Spamming, but it takes you back to the case of too few users.
How many people in total do you have using the mixers? How many mixers are there? Raph Levien posts his report regularly to the list, plus he has a Web site.
The ghio2 remailer code I used to write my (former) remailer had a "remailer-stats" command, that would give you traffic levels. I don't know how many of the other remailers support it. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp # (If this is a mailing list or news, please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)
At 8:44 PM -0700 6/3/97, Hallam-Baker wrote:
The point I was making was rather different, I think the total volume of PGP mail of all types is probably not a large enough fraction of the trafic on the net to be secure. Taking any use of PGP as prima facie
^^^^^^^^^^
evidence of subversive activity probably provides a reasonable cut. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
If you mean as prosecutable offense, I don't think you fully understand the laws of the United States. Much as we like to criticize the U.S., and bad laws, and whatnot, there is no such thing as "prima facie evidence of subversive activity," at least not since the House Unamerican Activities Committee and Joe McCarthy. If you mean that intelligence agencies are compiling data bases, perhaps this is so. All the more reason to push for vastly more remailers, PipeNet, etc.
How many people in total do you have using the mixers? How many mixers are there?
Raph Levien posts his report regularly to the list, plus he has a Web site. The remailer operator's list discusses issues, too. As for how many people "I have" using remailers, just 7, and one of those is about to be let go. Your other points assume certain political conditions which probably no cryptographic system can deal with. Our goal is to prevent such political conditions from happening in the U.S. Europe, despite its "privacy commissioners," may already be a lost cause. --Tim May There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
The point I was making was rather different, I think the total volume of PGP mail of all types is probably not a large enough fraction of the trafic on the net to be secure. Taking any use of PGP as prima facie
^^^^^^^^^^
evidence of subversive activity probably provides a reasonable cut. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
If you mean as prosecutable offense, I don't think you fully understand the laws of the United States. Much as we like to criticize the U.S., and bad laws, and whatnot, there is no such thing as "prima facie evidence of subversive activity," at least not since the House Unamerican Activities Committee and Joe McCarthy.
I really can't get excited about US domestic policy. That is not where the crypto is needed. Eve so if you hypothesise the extent of surveillance such that mixmaster remaillers are needed the constitution was thrown out long ago. Now this happened under Hoover and the FBI still have their headquarters named after him. I'm having great difficulty making sense of the finely calibrated level of paranoia which makes mixmaster both effective and necessary. On the other hand it strikes me that if we could work out a better version of Julf's pi.net remailer there would be a considerable benefit to the net. Phill
On Wed, 4 Jun 1997, Hallam-Baker wrote:
I really can't get excited about US domestic policy. That is not where the crypto is needed.
Arguable point. Depends on if you fear getting busted because of which causes you support. For many that is a serious issue.
Eve so if you hypothesise the extent of surveillance such that mixmaster remaillers are needed the constitution was thrown out long ago.
And your point being...? The consititution is a document that is followed only when it suits the purposes of those in power. If it was not for the factional infighting of the various branches of power, we would have no rights left at all.
Now this happened under Hoover and the FBI still have their headquarters named after him.
That is for three reasons: 1) Many in the FBI get off on that kind of power and see nothing wrong with it. (As long as they are the ones doing the survelence. Try doing it to them and see what happens...) 2) It is on all their stationary. 3) It is carved in stone on the building.
I'm having great difficulty making sense of the finely calibrated level of paranoia which makes mixmaster both effective and necessary.
Unfortunatly for mixmaster to work effectivly, you need a threshold of usage. That threshold has not been reached yet. With the successful campaign against remailers by those who oppose them, the problem is made worse. (As well as supporting a form of encryption not commonly available to "Joe Sixpack".) Currently, use of the Mixmaster remailer system is out of reach of most of the average users out there. The only serious project to address that need has been Private Idaho and development has stopped on that project.
On the other hand it strikes me that if we could work out a better version of Julf's pi.net remailer there would be a considerable benefit to the net.
Julf's remailer was more of a nym server than a remailer. A remailer gives a one way path, a nymserver gives a path back for replies. Currently the nymserver network is in pretty bad shape as well. They are difficult to use and are dependant on the whims of the remailer network. (If one element in the chain of remailers goes down, you are screwed until you can reset things.) They also have people who would like to see them shut down because they do not like the uses to which they are put. (Spreading ideas that are illegal, immoral, and/or fattening.) An easy to use nymserver would be a "Good Thing(tm)". I believe it to be possible, it just needs better ways of surviving the rubber hose attacks such things come under from time to time. Do you have a design that needs implementing? alano@teleport.com | "Those who are without history are doomed to retype it."
On the other hand it strikes me that if we could work out a better version of Julf's pi.net remailer there would be a considerable benefit to the net.
At FC '97 Jim McCoy gave a presentation on a significant upgrade to anonymizer-type remailers. At the time Jim said is was only a few months from a testable system. I haven't heard anything since then. Perhaps Lucky knows or Jim will chime in. --Steve
At 1:06 AM -0700 6/4/97, Lucky Green wrote:
At 06:27 PM 6/3/97 -0700, Tim May wrote:
(There are important issues, discussed by several of us several years ago, and more recently by Wei Dai and Lucky Green, dealing with correlation analysis of messages sent and messages received...esentially pattern analysis.
This type of analysis is unlikely to provide useful results for high-latency systems such as remailers. However, this analysis can be very fruitful on near real time systems such as ill-designed chained http anonymizers.
[Tim of course knows this, I just want to make sure that this is universally understood.]
Agreed, but there remains a risk even for conventional remailer uses. It all depends on latencies, numbers of messages, etc. Let us imagine Lucky and I are corresponding through a remailer network. Imagine the average latency, in total, is 2 hours. (Not unreasonable.) The kind of pattern analysis I'm talking about would look for "digrams" between my sending a message and Lucky receiving one. --Tim sends a message, a couple of hours later Lucky gets one. --then nothing, and Lucky gets nothing for several hours or more --Lucky sends a message and a couple of hours later Tim gets one --then nothing for several hours or more --Tim sends one, Lucky gets one a couple of hours later It all depends on: - how many other messages are being received by Lucky and Tim (PGP messages arriving from remailers, obviously, not just ordinary traffic, though ordinary traffic helps a bit) - the latencies, the longer the better (related to the above number) What I am picturing is a scatter plot of transmissions and receptions. I think an adversary with access to the sends and receives, even if encrypted (of course) could make some plausible deductions. He could certainly rule out some message pairs, e.g., Tim sends a message, but no message is received by, say, Perry. Or Perry sends a message, but this is not followed within statistically expected periods by messages received by, say, Duncan. So the "Tim-Lucky" digram might be "0. 6" and the "Tim-Perry" digram might be "0.003" and this would be useful in implicating likely comunicants. Throw in the reverse paths, e.g., the "Lucky-Tim" digram and the correlations could become quite strong. (Closely related of course to traffic analysis in general.) As we have been saying for years, there's a nice MS thesis in this for someone. --Tim May There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
At 05:29 PM 6/3/97 -0400, Hallam-Baker wrote:
Actually remailers were invented by a lass called Stephi whose hobbies appeared to include being tied up for fun.
AFIK, remailers were invented by David Chaum. --Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred. Put a stake through the heart of DES! Join the quest at http://www.frii.com/~rcv/deschall.htm
[Well, this should trigger most people's killfiles.... :-)] At 05:29 PM 6/3/97 -0400, Hallam-Baker wrote:
I'll accept that the ranting faction do some good work but I've not seen anything usefull out of either Bell or Vulis unless that is you are an FBI agent looking to get a promotion from Freeh.
Vulis has contributed a few good things to the remailer discussions, such as methods for keeping block lists as hashes rather than plaintext, which potentially increases privacy of people on publicly accessible lists. (I say "potentially", because I don't think anyone's implemented it, but it's clearly the Right Thing to do.) However, he's deliberately made himself annoying to everyone, without the redeeming social value in most of his posts that arch-ranters like Detweiler had, and even his useful posts generally include gratuituous vulgar insults. Bell's value, by contrast, has been in the Assassination Politics work. Sure, he's a mostly one-track ranter, to the extent that lots of people got fed up with it, but much of his analysis is sound even though his advocacy of it is pretty dodgy. I don't think that anybody is likely to set up this sort of Assassination Pool on a regular basis, but he does solve one of the fundamental difficulties with it - how to let the real hit man claim that he did the job and where to send his payment when the deal is handled entirely over the net (and thus there's no good way to prove who done it vs. who's claiming they did it to get the money.) Some of these techniques may be useful when applied to other problems in the emerging Internet economy; it gets at issues of repudiation of anonymous transactions, need for (real) escrow, etc. Bell's point that government would be much better behaved if the individuals in government could be held individually and personally responsible for their actions is certainly valid. Whether shooting them is an appropriate way to hold them responsible is another discussion (:-). # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp # (If this is a mailing list or news, please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)
On Thu, 5 Jun 1997, Bill Stewart wrote:
Bell's point that government would be much better behaved if the individuals in government could be held individually and personally responsible for their actions is certainly valid. Whether shooting them is an appropriate way to hold them responsible is another discussion (:-).
That was the Founding Fathers' point in instituting direct election of House members every two years. Bell's point, if it was the same, entailed murder. It's not another discusion of ends. It's a discussion of means, and his means border on the insane. That alone doesn't make his idea criminal in a society with a First Amendment, but the fact that he had an end in common with other political thinkers doesn't make his means legitimate. In other words, Bell's point, as you describe it, has nothing original to say about ends. It's all about means, and as such it's pretty well whacko. MacN
participants (24)
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Adam Back -
Alan -
bennett_t1＠popmail.firn.edu -
Bill Frantz -
Bill Stewart -
dlv＠bwalk.dm.com -
Duncan Frissell -
Hallam-Baker -
ichudov＠algebra.com -
Jeremiah A Blatz -
Jim Burnes -
Jim Burnes - Denver
-
Kent Crispin -
Kris Carlier -
Lucky Green -
Mac Norton -
mpd＠netcom.com -
nobody＠REPLAY.COM -
Paul Bradley -
Ray Arachelian -
Robert A. Costner -
Steve Schear -
Tim May -
William H. Geiger III