Fwd: [tor-talk] giving up pseudonymity after collecting experiences with pseudonymous project development
i find these kinds of experiments fascinating and would love to see more of them! ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Patrick Schleizer <adrelanos@riseup.net> Date: Sat, Jan 18, 2014 at 5:09 AM Subject: [tor-talk] giving up pseudonymity after collecting experiences with pseudonymous project development You may have noticed that I, previously known only known under the pseudonym adrelanos, decided to give up my pseudonymity. It was an interesting experience to pseudonymously maintain a Linux distribution (Whonix). I've learned a lot during these ~ 2 years. I didn't have too bad luck in the lottery of life and are won a citizenship, which is at low risk compared to less lucky ones. Living in a country, where pseudonymity for this kind of activity isn't crucial. Fortunately, according to latest press, neither the US nor Germany are killing their own citizen for criticizing "the system". That is, the mass surveillance police state, the military industrial complex, the system of economy, that needs exponential growth to prevent imploding. And so it doesn't become even worse, and better for the less lucky ones, it is important to speak out in public and to take action. Staying pseudonymous for such a long time became more and more a burden. For me, it is not healthy for psychology. When pseudonymously working a a project, you cannot tell anyone about it and they're wondering with what you never tell much. You need to constantly second guess every tiny action. Concentrate on not messing up. Also you'll never know if you already messed up and if "they" already know who you are. You only need to mess up once, and you're always linked to that project. Lucky me, I wasn't forced to stay pseudonymous for ever. I am looking forward to continue contributing to the awesome Free (as in freedom) Software community. Being no longer pseudonymous allows me to speak at conferences, to attend key singing parties, to meet up with other developers, to voice chat with other developers, to chat on IRC without fear of leaking too much information, to be less paranoid, sometimes even running searches in clearnet if that is more convenient, and so forth.
I am continually reminded why I prefer to be onymous when talking to various counterculture/resistance/etc movement members around the city. So many of them are paranoid of each other and 'the man' So I can confirm this from direct experience. I like dealing with people with real names, locations, and whom I can tell them whatever I feel like is appropriate, without having to compartmentalize my life. I can only imaging that a huge contributing factor to Edward Snowden's decision to leak was the inability to tell anyone close to him (girlfriend, family, friends) what the hell was bothering him. On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 09:39:10PM -0800, coderman wrote:
i find these kinds of experiments fascinating and would love to see more of them!
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Patrick Schleizer <adrelanos@riseup.net> Date: Sat, Jan 18, 2014 at 5:09 AM Subject: [tor-talk] giving up pseudonymity after collecting experiences with pseudonymous project development
You may have noticed that I, previously known only known under the pseudonym adrelanos, decided to give up my pseudonymity. It was an interesting experience to pseudonymously maintain a Linux distribution (Whonix). I've learned a lot during these ~ 2 years.
I didn't have too bad luck in the lottery of life and are won a citizenship, which is at low risk compared to less lucky ones. Living in a country, where pseudonymity for this kind of activity isn't crucial. Fortunately, according to latest press, neither the US nor Germany are killing their own citizen for criticizing "the system". That is, the mass surveillance police state, the military industrial complex, the system of economy, that needs exponential growth to prevent imploding. And so it doesn't become even worse, and better for the less lucky ones, it is important to speak out in public and to take action.
Staying pseudonymous for such a long time became more and more a burden. For me, it is not healthy for psychology. When pseudonymously working a a project, you cannot tell anyone about it and they're wondering with what you never tell much. You need to constantly second guess every tiny action. Concentrate on not messing up. Also you'll never know if you already messed up and if "they" already know who you are. You only need to mess up once, and you're always linked to that project. Lucky me, I wasn't forced to stay pseudonymous for ever.
I am looking forward to continue contributing to the awesome Free (as in freedom) Software community. Being no longer pseudonymous allows me to speak at conferences, to attend key singing parties, to meet up with other developers, to voice chat with other developers, to chat on IRC without fear of leaking too much information, to be less paranoid, sometimes even running searches in clearnet if that is more convenient, and so forth.
On Mon, 2014-01-20 at 00:00 -0600, Troy Benjegerdes wrote:
I am continually reminded why I prefer to be onymous when talking to various counterculture/resistance/etc movement members around the city. So many of them are paranoid of each other and 'the man'
So I can confirm this from direct experience. I like dealing with people with real names, locations, and whom I can tell them whatever I feel like is appropriate, without having to compartmentalize my life.
It's definitely a privilege to be able to do this. In the United States, the animal liberation activism community (among others) is rightly paranoid of infiltrators and state repression. There's a certain level of paranoia that's culturally accepted as necessary "security culture". This might involve using pseudonyms, but obviously not very secure ones, because this organization happens primarily in meatspace. This dovetails nicely with the somewhat nomadic lifestyles of the people involved, and the self-determinist ethic from the punk scene that's so wedded to this group of cultures. It's common for people to introduce themselves with obviously psuedonymous names like "carrot" or "scout", but these people might even use these names on a personal basis with people who know their legal names. This comes back to the threat model -- these activists are scared of at most an FBI investigation, and at baseline local police keeping tabs on them. Weak pseudonyms are expensive enough for local police to keep the community afloat. Likewise, I doubt it would have been very dangerous for adrelanos' partners or close friends to know their activities as a Whonix maintainer. Probably a hyperinvestigation leveraging the full powers of the surveillance states of the world would have penetrated this layer of psuedonymity, but I doubt this would ever have happened. It would have been interesting to see how far this could have progressed along a spectrum from complete psuedonymity to complete ...nymity. How long would adrelanos have been psychologically capable of keeping up the act if a single friend had known? -- Sent from Ubuntu
On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 10:51 PM, Peter Gutmann <pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
... His ideas are intriguing to you and you wish to subscribe to his newsletter?
also, A+++ Would Transact Again! more interesting reports: "The Memoirs of Eleusis" see http://w3.cultdeadcow.com/cms/2005/03/a-classic-lost.html , context: http://www.erowid.org/archive/rhodium/chemistry/eleusis/eleusis.vs.fester.ht... they removed Eleusis from marketplace and revoked keys; apparently ToS or something... best regards, except for those uppity aromatic indole rings
participants (4)
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coderman -
Peter Gutmann -
Ted Smith -
Troy Benjegerdes