PERRY-GRAMS (Does Perry speak for Cypherpunks?) I have a solution to the Perry off-topic problem: PERRY-GRAMS. I got this idea from the following text of Tim May's:. ----------------- start Tim May text --------------------------------- Perry is Perry. He has certainly written his share of rants and "off-topic" posts, as have we all. Literally thousands of his posts over the past 3 years reside on my disk drives, and certainly until recently most of them were not about writing code. --------------------end Tim May text --------------------------------- Firstly, what is a Perry-Gram? 1. Find a long Cypherpunk post by Perry that is in your opinion, "off-topic". Keep the header. 2. Add the full post of Perry's "Ciphergroupies" post which I have thoughtfully included at the end of this post. Include header. 3. Add text asking Perry to defend his off-topic post as appropriate to Cypherpunks. For true effectiveness, you really need to post several Perry-Grams per provocation. To be really effective, Cypherpunk "Ciphergroupies" will need to do a little networking. Most don't have much in the way of Cypherpunk archives - but some do. If you want to make some Perry-Grams but lack the archives, then post a call to Cypherpunks to have someone with archives to send you as many long, "off-topic" posts by Perry as they can. With a little cooperation, we can build up a data base of Perry "off-topic" posts. Unfortunately, my Cypherpunk archives were lost, so I won't be much help. - I am at a loss for Perry's words. However, a lot of Cypherpunks keep lots of old posts. I am willing to store at least one 1.44 meg diskette of Perry-Grams in compressed .zip format. Trade them like baseball cards. Of course, with computers, that's sharing :-). If you're having problems getting people with archives to help you, then contact Tim May. I suspect that Tim (Bless his Generosity) will be willing to dig up some potential Perry-Grams material for you. Treasure your Perry-Grams. They are not merely for the current Perry threads. If you save them, then you can whip them out in the future when Perry does more of his nasty, hateful "off-topic" attacks. I recommend Perry-Gram diskettes. I think this is the best way to bell the Perry- cat. Let Perry deny his own words! :-) :-) :-) Crypto relevance: Cypherpunks cannot be well described as just a list for techno freaks who love Crypto. I believe that most of the heavy crypto coders & theorists would be just as happy to be working on AI, linkers, natural language parsers, etc.. - were it not for POLITICAL CONSID- ERATIONS! I think most of the active people on Cypherpunks despise central political control & are active in order to stop it. Cypherpunks is motivationally driven by this political consideration. Perry did not spend $50k & "spend months of [his] life struggling to..." just because he thinks that computer crypto is "RAD KOOL". Then why drive out our polemists & our conspiracy buffs? Conspiracy theory is the theory of the working of states by non-establishment writers. Our political writers are "crying fire" when "danger of fire" is evident to them. They MUST give out the alarm. Most people are ignorant of the degree of danger that we are in from the power- mad illigitmate United States "Federal" State. Thank God for "extremist right-wing kooks" who do conspiracy writing. They may yet save us from establishment "left-wing Liberal kooks" who seem desperate to bankrupt us & turn America into a police state. Not that the Republicans are much better. They seem to be on a mission to cut Democratic spending by 5%. - As the Russians say "Prophylactic politics." - When there is public discontent with the elite's policies, give the people an insincere group of politicians to cater to the public's grievances. -------- start of Perry E. Metzger "Ciphergroupie" post ---------- Received: from toad.com by relay3.UU.NET with SMTP id QQzcct17133; Wed, 9 Aug 1995 21:53:27 -0400 Received: by toad.com id AA08720; Wed, 9 Aug 95 18:35:44 PDT Received: from panix4.panix.com by toad.com id AA08714; Wed, 9 Aug 95 18:35:40 PDT Received: from panix2.panix.com (panix2.panix.com [198.7.0.3]) by panix4.panix.com (8.6.12/8.6.12+PanixU1.1) with SMTP id VAA03975; Wed, 9 Aug 1995 21:34:13 -0400 Message-Id: <199508100134.VAA03975@panix4.panix.com> To: KALLISTE@delphi.com Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com Subject: Re: Only 1/3 of Government Computers Down So Far In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 09 Aug 1995 12:29:59 EDT." <01HTVAYUCH6W90PB08@delphi.com> Reply-To: perry@piermont.com X-Reposting-Policy: redistribute only with permission Date: Wed, 09 Aug 1995 21:34:12 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@panix.com> Sender: owner-cypherpunks@toad.com Precedence: bulk KALLISTE@delphi.com writes:

Many people are interested in cryptology because they don't want the NSA (among others) invading their privacy.

So, the question is this: do people want to follow the standard "ooh, lets shudder at the conspiracy theories" track, and fall flat on their faces, or do they want to see cryptography implemented and widely deployed? The noise levels on this list have driven most of the important crypto types off it. People like Phil Karn and Steve Bellovin, who actually implement stuff, aren't here any more. Instead, we have a vast flood of ciphergroupies who love to post the latest funny bit they found on the net, discuss whether David Koresh was being unfairly persecuted, and how many bits of toe lint they found last week. What we used to have was the cafe where the politically motivated cryptographers hung out and gossiped. Now we have an open sewer in which the occassional pearl still floats, and the cryptographers are mostly gone. Those of us who want to discuss cryptography here have been displaced. If your goal is to impede communication about cryptography, you've admirably succeeded. You've cut off one more place where people were discussing how to deploy real-world solutions. Tim May is wrong. I don't care what you call a "cypherpunk" -- thats your business. However, the useful people *are* the people who write code, spend long hours working to get standards implemented, work lobbying in Congress, etc. Those of you who just rant, like Tim, were very useful two years ago, but its getting rather thin listening to you guys make it impossible to discuss real work while you blather. (Sorry, Tim. However, as long as you are going to call me "abusive" I might as well speak my mind. If you are going to do the time, might as well do the crime.)

The Foster story concerns the chief NSA privacy-invasion of modern times: spying on domestic banking transactions. So it's relevant.

Actually, what you've been posting has been even below the standards of journalistic integrity (i.e. few) that you find on a Pacifica radio station. I don't even care if all the conspiracies are real. Isn't what is out in the open enough? If the invasions of privacy that the government acknowledges and the crap like Clipper that they try to foist on us isn't horrifying enough, what weak-assed conspiracy theory that someone came up with while tripping is going to do it for you. Reality is frightening enough. FINCEN is real. The NSA really spied on people at least until the congressional hearings in the '70s. The government really invades privacy every day. Why do I need crap?

The Grand Inquisitor role is getting a little old. So if you want to continue to play it, my response is: Fuck Off.

-Orlin

Frankly, Orlin, I think you are, with respect to the goals we are trying to advance here, a useless lump of flesh. I've spent about $50,000 of my own money trying to make the internet safe for root-eaters like yourself. I've spent months of my life struggling to get RFCs out, and I'm spending most of this month locked in my apartment writing code. Right now, we are coordinating an effort to try to get get IPSEC widely implemented in the next several months and deployed by spring. What do you do, exactly, other than generate chaff to make it impossible for any real work to be seen on the radar? When people bring up real work, like cryptographic libraries or Wei's stuff or the work I've been doing in the IETF and that sort of thing people like Matt Blaze notice, and maybe Ray Cromwell and Hal Finney (cypherpunks both, not ciphergroupies) try to discuss things, but the folks like you basically drown everything out by making more noise about random conspiracy garbage. Frankly, if anyone is helping the NSA, its you. They don't want to see universally deployed crypto. You could be out trying to spread cryptography by coding, by handing people crypto when they need it, or any one of dozens of other things. Instead, what you are doing is making it impossible for people to try to get work done. I have no idea what you are like personally. Maybe you're a nice, smart guy. Maybe you are really a useful person in your other life. However, I don't think your posting more conspiracy tracts is improving life as we know it. You have become an impediment -- a lump of rock in the highway. You aren't part of the solution -- you are part of the problem. Perry ----------------end Perry E. Metzger "Ciphergroupie" post -------------- PUSH EM BACK! PUSH EM BACK! WWWAAAYYYY BBBAAACCCK! BBBEEEAAATTTT STATE! Gary Jeffers