Anonymous Posting
Faustine wrote:
So why is it that the vast majority of the technical and insightful contributions here seem to come from people who aren't averse to using a reasonable simulacrum of a real name and address?
I find the content from remailers is far higher than average for the list.
I made the deliberate choice not to use a remailer because I think it's more interesting to contribute while having a prior body of posts "attached" to me. People come to know more what to expect--and if I irritate/bore/piss them off too much, they stop reading me. Which is exactly as it should be.
So sign your messages. With your true name, if that's important.
Though if you're after complete privacy re: your opinions and the details of your life, you're better off not writing them down in the first place, here or anywhere else.
The technology isn't there yet, true, but it won't get there without deploying it and using it. Why isn't this obvious?
I assume everyone here weighed those considerations for themselves before they got here: as far as I'm concerned, nobody has the slightest business deciding it for anyone else.
Don't worry, the cypherpunks list isn't going anywhere. It's just not realistic to put that genie back in the bottle. It would have to be a separate list entirely or one which rode on the current cypherpunks list. We may not be able to decide for others, but we can certainly look down on so-called cypherpunks who, in many cases, cannot even encrypt a message, never mind "writing code". Many, in fact, exhibit hostility towards remailers and anonymity, as you do. What I fail to understand is why such people are on this list in the first place, but, as you say, people make their own decisions. (None of these comments apply to Tim May, of course.)
On Tuesday, August 21, 2001, at 07:59 PM, An Metet wrote:
I find the content from remailers is far higher than average for the list.
I find it lower. Maybe it's just me. A lot of gibbering, ranting, and insults-without-traceability. Doesn't mean I don't "support" the legality and technology of remailers, just a comment on what traffic I see from them. Not surprising, of course.
The technology isn't there yet, true, but it won't get there without deploying it and using it. Why isn't this obvious?
The technology won't get there by a particular person using remailers, inasmuch as the actions of that person don't cause others to change. This is also known as the "but what if everyone did what you're doing?" fallacy. I've grokked this since around 1966. Why isn't this obvious?
We may not be able to decide for others, but we can certainly look down on so-called cypherpunks who, in many cases, cannot even encrypt a message, never mind "writing code". Many, in fact, exhibit hostility towards remailers and anonymity, as you do.
1) I used the Kremvax pseudo-remailer a year or two prior to the Cypherpunks list. Indequate, of course. 2) I used the earlier Cypherpunks remailers in their first month of operation, in 1992. More to the point, I architected the basic features remailers should have at the first Cypherpunks meeting. Check the archives if you doubt this. 3) I pulled off the "Blacknet" thing using both remailers and PGP in 1993. This was a fully-untraceable two-way information market. No fancy-shmantzy ZKS system was needed, providing one was willing to live within the latency constraints of using Usenet. (Still a reasonable goal for text messages. Receiving MPEG-2 movies untraceably will remain a thorny technical problem until bandwidth goes up by a large factor.) 4) I use remailers when I choose to. Other times I use my normal dial-up account. How do you know I am not some of the posts you are referring to? 5) Signing an article is giving away something of value. (For example, it might be used against the signer.) Absent some reason to sign, some "consideration," why sign a post? Why make it even slightly easier for a prosecutor to produce in court when nothing of value is being given in return?
What I fail to understand is why such people are on this list in the first place, but, as you say, people make their own decisions.
(None of these comments apply to Tim May, of course.)
There are many enemies of liberty subscribed to the list, and posting to it. This is what happens when the "ideology-agnostic" crum-bums take control. "Cypherpunks write Rijndael C code...they don't care about ideology!" Fuck that. Cypherpunks care about both code _and_ ideology, else why bother? If Rijndael C code is all that matters, why not just drop Cypherpunks and join Perrypunks? Oh wait, it seems most nitwits _have_. Never mind. --Tim May
participants (3)
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An Metet -
David Honig -
Tim May